


The Substitution Cypher

by tommyandthejons



Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-29 22:59:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16274132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tommyandthejons/pseuds/tommyandthejons
Summary: Tommy is ready for almost anything his senior year of high school— it comes with the territory when you’re training to be a spy— up until he ends up with the wrong Jon as his roommate.





	The Substitution Cypher

**Author's Note:**

> So many thanks to everyone encouraged and helped me write this, but especially blushyfaces, who was the first to read any of it despite not even going to this school, and who encouraged me to write more, and SelfRescuingPrincess and sixtotenpotatoes who did amazing work helping me hammer the drafts I originally sent them into a far superior fic and are responsible for some of the best parts of this— you couldn’t ask for more helpful, generous betas!
> 
> Also please keep this for fandom eyes only.

**The First Quarter**

“You won’t believe who we have for Intelligence, Jon,” Tommy said, pushing open the door to what was sure to be the best dorm in New Salomon Academy. Finally, they were seniors and instead of being crammed six to a room, they only had to share with each other. There was a hierarchy at NSA, and Tommy was ready to reap the benefits. He and Jon had always known they’d end up sharing a room once they hit senior year and were eligible for a double. They were a team, whenever they had the choice, Jon with his easy smile and glib tongue, Tommy, piecing things together. They were supposed to be adaptable, and Tommy always did his best working with whoever their teachers assigned, but his easiest work was always with Jon.

Which is why it was a surprise when someone, who was definitely not Jon, shouted back, “I’m sure that’s a tragedy, but right now I’m trying to find my favorite pants which I definitely did not leave at home, so give me a moment!”

“You’re not Jon,” Tommy said, which, in addition to being a statement of the obvious, was the sort of bumbling response to a surprising situation that would lose you marks in espionage, probably get you assigned extra tutoring, and would definitely leave you exposed to your target.

“Actually,” the figure turned around, so that Tommy was no longer staring at his ass. “I am. Jon Lovett, the pleasure is yours, roomie.”

He held out his hand and Tommy stared at it, still shocked.

“This has to be a mistake,” he said, instead of taking it, and, still holding his bag, he turned and left the room to figure out what had gone wrong, leaving the Lovett standing with his hand outstretched.

—

The front office was busy so Tommy tried to wait patiently. Patience and politeness and everything would be straightened out, he was sure of it. He wished he hadn’t brought his bag with him though, it was heavy, and he’d have to go back for his trunk anyway. He also wished he hadn’t been so rude to that guy. It was the shock of someone not Jon in his room, but it wasn’t really the guy’s fault, just some sort of paperwork problem.

“Next,” said one of the secretaries, and Tommy put on his best getting-an-adult-to-listen face. 

“I think there’s been some sort of a mix-up,” he said. “I’m supposed to be rooming with Jon Favreau, but,” crap, he couldn’t remember the guy’s last name, “But there was another guy in our room who thought it was his.”

“Let’s double check,” the secretary said, flipping through a binder. “Vietor, Vietor, oh there you are. Room 63. Roommate Jon,” Tommy almost sighed with relief then she finished, “Lovett.”

“Favreau,” Tommy corrected.

She flipped the binder around and pointed, “It says Lovett.”

“But Jon and I put each other as roommates,” Tommy explained patiently. There was a system, and if both people put each other down, they were supposed to get each other as roommates.

“Why don’t you give it a chance? Unless you have a reason to justify the switch?” She was busy, Tommy got that, it was move-in day. He couldn’t let it go though.

“Why can’t we just switch? Lovett’s new,” or at least Tommy assumed he was because he knew everyone in his year. “It’s not like it would make a difference if he rooms with me or with whoever Jon’s rooming with.”

“Perhaps someone thought it might be better for the school as a whole if you and Mr. Favreau weren’t sharing a room,” came a commanding voice from behind him.

“Headmaster Obama,” Tommy said, immediately standing a little straighter.

“Mr. Vietor,” the headmaster acknowledged. “Now, I know these arrangements might not be to your liking, but I want to assure you, we’ve considered them very thoroughly. Why don’t you give Mr. Lovett a chance, and if this still isn’t working by next quarter, we’ll sit down and have a chat.”

“But Sir!” Tommy exclaimed.

“Next quarter, Mr. Vietor,” Principal Obama said firmly and Tommy knew from his tone that arguing any further was pointless.

“Yes sir,” he said, doing his best to keep his disappointment off his face. After all, making the best of a bad situation was something they were supposed to be training for and if he couldn’t manage now, how would they ever trust him out in the field?

—

“It’s not fair,” Tommy complained to Jon, having summed up his problems. “This was supposed to be our year!”

“We still have classes together, and it’s not like we won’t be hanging out.” Jon said reasonably. Tommy hated how eminently reasonable he could be sometimes, particularly on the occasions when Jon managed to keep his cool and Tommy was the one who was worked up. “Besides, it could be worse, you could be stuck rooming with Miller here.”

“I like to think of it as me being stuck rooming with you,” Tim called from across the room.

Tommy tilted his head, conceding the point. Tim was their friend, kind of, but he was best in small doses.

“Besides, what if they’d inflicted Miller on the new guy?” Jon asked, his smile an invitation to share the joke.

“A guy could really get a complex with you around, Favreau,” Tim said.

“I guess I owe Lovett an apology,” Tommy said reluctantly. He hadn’t even really considered how the new guy felt when he’d lost it. Now that he had realized, he knew it was going to eat at him until he apologized.

“You can do it,” Jon said, clapping him on the arm. Tommy rolled his eyes. He really needed to get new friends.

—

Lovett was lounging on his bed, playing some sort of hand-held video game. Tommy was pretty sure they on the contraband list, but he was also pretty sure he’d already done enough to make a terrible first impression, so he wasn’t planning on saying anything about it.

“Hey,” he started, but Lovett held up one finger, not looking up, then went back to tapping frantically at the keys. Tommy was left standing over him, feeling increasingly awkward with each passing second. He started cataloging how many items he could memorize in the room; it was always good to practice spatial awareness. Besides, it kept him from worrying too much about what he was going to say if Lovett ever gave him the chance to say anything at all.

“Fuck, I’m dead,” Lovett said after what felt like an eternity, tossing the game aside. He didn’t say anything directly to Tommy or even really look at him, but Tommy didn’t want to wait any longer.

“Look, dude, I wanted to say that I’m sorry—” Tommy hadn’t even gotten halfway through his apology when Lovett looked up, eyes blazing, and interrupted him.

“Look, dude,” he mimicked, and even in the face of all his anger, Tommy stopped to wonder whether he really sounded like _that_. “You can roll back the welcome wagon. I went to the office too, and I know they won’t let us trade until next quarter, unless something terrible happens, so either stuff me in a recycling bin like the homophobe you clearly are so I can go back and get you out of my room, or leave me alone until then.” His voice broke a little bit as he finished.

Tommy stood frozen. There were too many things in that sentence to pick apart.

“I’m sorry,” he tried again, but Lovett had already returned to his video game. Tommy took a deep breath and then went to unpack his things instead of standing over Lovett like some sort of creepy stalker. He would fix this, somehow, he just needed a strategy.

—

His new roommate managed to sleep through Tommy’s alarm, and his getting ready, carefully checking his uniform to make sure everything was in place and picking up the bag he’d packed the night before. Lovett hadn’t so much as stirred, and though Tommy hadn’t been loud, he hadn’t thought he’d been that quiet; the sounds of the doors and drawers opening and closing would have been more than enough to wake Tommy. He thought about waking him, but wasn’t at all sure what sort of a reaction he would get. Better to go straight to breakfast. Tommy wasn’t his roommate’s keeper and he didn’t owe him anything, Lovett had made that abundantly clear.

The thought wasn’t enough to keep him from feeling guilty when Jon greeted him with a mouthful of eggs and promptly asked where his roommate was.

“Sleeping,” Tommy said and made a face which was enough to get Jon to change the subject to something less controversial.

Still, Tommy was glad when he saw the other Jon made it down before they closed the cafeteria for breakfast, even if he wasn’t glad enough to make eye contact or wave him over to join them. He watched as Jon went to the end of a table and sat by himself, then let his Jon draw him back into conversation about what they’d done over the summer. He had to work to look sympathetic and not jealous as Jon complained that his boss at his internship in DC had been an NSA alum and kept giving him extra training. Apparently, it had cut into the number of times he’d been able to sneak off and meet up with Emily. Tommy understood, he did, Emily and Jon had been flirting and emailing ever since they’d all gotten entangled in an extracurricular activity the year before. Still, he couldn’t help wish he’d been the one with the opportunity for extra training. He’d been stuck at home, in Boston, all summer, pretending to family and friends alike that he went to a regular school and fielding questions about what colleges he was planning to apply to, as if he hadn’t already picked a school that would provide access to further espionage training and a good cover. Normally he could have escaped at least a little to hang out with Jon, but with Jon busy at his internship, he hadn’t even been able to do that, which made it even harder to sympathize. 

Despite how much he’d missed Jon over the summer, Tommy was grateful when he looked up and saw it was five minutes to the hour. He crammed the last piece of toast in his mouth and swallowed hastily then said, “Come on, don’t want to be late on the first day,” and jumped up, Jon following close behind. Tommy barely let himself consider that his roommate would have no idea where to go.

—

It turned out that the only classes Tommy had with Lovett were English and World Politics which wasn’t surprising given that Tommy was in more advanced classes than not. From the little Tommy knew about Lovett, he didn’t seem to have the skills for those. Tommy had tried to guess which school Lovett had transferred from— it was rare, but it happened occasionally and it made more sense than if Lovett had transferred from a regular school, which would have been unheard of. He couldn’t help thinking it would have been easier if they’d put Lovett a year down instead of this catch-up plan.

Lovett was still pointedly ignoring him, though he was loudly and enthusiastically talkative with everyone else, laughing at his own jokes in a way that should have been obnoxious but mostly made Tommy want to laugh too. He didn’t because he wasn’t going to force further friendship attempts where they weren’t wanted.

Still, it sucked when Lovett whispered something mid-class to Jon and Jon laughed so loud that their teacher asked, “Something you’d like to share with the class, Mr. Favreau?” leaving Jon shaking his head no, face red from laughter, not protesting when Professor Plouffe assigned him detention.

“Detention isn’t funny, Favs,” Tommy said in the hallway on the way to their next class.

“Oh come on, like we’ve never gotten detention before,” Jon said, slinging an arm around Tommy’s shoulder. Tommy shrugged it off. That was different; exactly how it was different, he wasn’t sure, but it was. 

“Starting the year off on a bad note,” he said, as if this year wasn’t already turning into the worst year of high school when it was supposed to be the best.

“Sorry man,” Jon said with a shrug before throwing an arm back over Tommy’s shoulder. “He’s funny.”

The worst part was that Tommy didn’t disagree, but he was excluded from the jokes; Lovett didn’t even deign to make jokes about Tommy, that was how thoroughly he was freezing Tommy out.

—

Tommy expected the younger kids to hate Lovett, but they’d turned him into a strange combination of a mascot and a mentor, despite the fact that the majority of them could run rings around him when it came to anything spy related.

When he actually showed up at meals, he took them with Elijah and Travis and some of the underclassmen, not with Tommy, Jon, Cody, and Tim. Tommy tried not to pay attention, but it had become almost a second nature to keep tabs on Lovett. He couldn’t help it. That was why when Jon asked, “I wonder where Lovett is?” during lunch as he was going through another draft of the English assignment he’d teamed up with Lovett on, Tommy automatically said, “Your 3 o’clock, by Elijah.”

It wasn’t like Lovett was at all stealthy, which made it completely unfair the way Jon’s jaw dropped even if Tommy _was_ sitting with his back to Lovett. “How did you know that?” he asked.

Tommy willed himself not to flush. He wasn’t successful, but he managed to say, “It’s important to know your surroundings, Jon,” as dryly as he could, hoping Jon wouldn’t comment. 

“Maybe next time we could just sit with him instead,” Jon suggested. He seemed sort of amused by something, and Cody snorted into his drink. 

“Inside joke?” Tommy asked. Jon stood, lifting his lunch tray, and ducked the question. He said, “Gotta ask Lovett a question, I’ll see you in class,” before walking towards Lovett’s table.

Cody leaned over then and asked, “Do you have notes from Arabic? I zoned out during the lecture and I can’t figure out how to translate this,” tearing Tommy’s attention away from Jon and Jon. He dug through his bag and tossed his notebook over to Cody, getting caught up in a discussion of what exactly the passage they were supposed to translate meant until he heard Jon laugh so loud that the teachers actually got up to investigate. He looked over to see Lovett looking very pleased with himself, sighed then turned back to Cody to finish explaining the passage as best he could before lunch was done.

—

Tommy was lying on his bed, legs against the wall, holding his lacrosse stick and cradling a ball, focusing on the back and forth movement to clear his head. They didn’t have sports exactly— there was physical education, but that was more of an umbrella term for intensive training in different martial arts styles than anything that could be found at a typical high school— though occasionally there’d be a pickup game of something on the lawn or they’d pretend for the rare visitors who managed their way through all the precautions the school had to keep them secluded. Tommy brought the stick with him anyway because he found it relaxing.

Lovett burst through the door with all the grace of, well of something really graceless, and Tommy managed to quell his first instinct which was to pitch the ball straight at him. They were, after all, taught to use the weapons they had at hand. It was good he hadn’t because Lovett would have been rightfully pissed if Tommy had hit him and then he didn’t think Lovett would accept instinct as an excuse. Tommy was pretty sure the only thing that would be worse than the cold war they were currently waging would be if Lovett started actively fighting with him.

“You would play lacrosse,” Lovett muttered.

Tommy dropped the stick to the side and pushed himself up on his elbows so he was looking at Lovett then asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Uh, hi, I’m Thomas Vietor the fourth and I’m the WASPiest WASP this side of the Atlantic and in between playing lacrosse with my bros and watching the interest accumulate on my trust fund, I have everyone at this stupid school wrapped around my handsome finger.”

“Yeah, well, I’m Jon Lovett and—” Tommy paused.

“And what?” Lovett challenged, arms crossed over his chest.

“And nothing,” Tommy said, like there weren’t five insults waiting to come out, from “and all I do is play video games and crash into places where I’m not wanted,” to the always classic douche cough, because his mind was stuck on the fact that Lovett had called him handsome.

“Weak,” Lovett scoffed, and how unfair was it that Tommy was being judged for not being mean enough?

“Sorry, I’m not enough of an asshole for you today,” Tommy said, only to have Lovett leer back at him and say, “Oh Tommy, you’re always enough asshole for me,” in a way that left Tommy’s stomach feeling even more twisted than it had been before.

—

The problem with the two classes he had with Lovett was that Lovett was distracting. He couldn’t seem to sit still. He was always shifting in his chair, moving back and forth, folding himself into different configurations, reaching down into his bag to find something then putting whatever it was back. Somehow sitting in front of him was worse than being behind him because even though Tommy couldn’t see what he was doing, he found himself devoting half of his focus to trying to intuit what Lovett was doing anyway. It wasn’t a bad skill to have necessarily, but it would have been nice to be honing it when he was supposed to instead of in the middle of World Politics, which he was actually interested in.

As Professor Rhodes lectured on instability in the Middle East, Lovett jiggled his leg up and down against the back of Tommy’s chair. He suffered through it as Rhodes reviewed conflicts and insurgencies, but when he started peppering the review with anecdotes about his work abroad, Tommy couldn’t take it anymore. He reached a hand behind him and placed it on Lovett’s knee, adding pressure until Lovett stilled then turned his head just enough so that he could see Lovett and whispered, “Please stop.”

If he spent the rest of the class with the sensation Lovett was glaring daggers at the back of his head, well, at least it was slightly less distracting than either the reverberations or the feel of Lovett’s knee under his hand had been.

—

Tommy heard most of the rumors about Lovett because people kept insisting on thinking, as his roommate, Tommy would know the truth about them. Since he knew nothing about Lovett, he responded to each with his most inscrutable face, leaving whoever asked no better off than they had been before they'd asked him. He had to stay amused somehow, and besides, it was always good to practice resisting interrogation.

He'd started keeping a list of the rumors in the back of his notebook with initials next to each one tracking who he heard them from and how often they reached him. He didn’t really expect to learn anything from it, but every once and a while he’d read over the rumors and laugh.

_He was kicked out of all the other schools and NSA was his last chance. DRM_

_He'd been invited to the school because he'd discovered the secret to time travel and they wanted to see if he'd let something slip. BB_

_He wasn't actually a student, he'd graduated but was hiding because he'd been burned as a spy. IM, JM_

_He was a Russian plant sent to infiltrate the school and the reason he was so bad at being a spy was because he was trying to put them at ease. JK_

_He was a direct descendant of insert your choice of favorite famous American and/or spy. EC, TH_

"The Scarlet Pimpernel," Tommy repeated out loud, shaking his head in disbelief. He'd broken on that last one and said, "Consider reading a book," to the frosh who'd asked, his voice dripping with disdain. He’d tried to have sympathy; he’d fallen for some whoppers from students and teachers alike when he’d first started, but direct descent from the _Scarlet Pimpernel_?

"That's my favorite too," Lovett said from the doorway. "Don't you think I'd be dashing in a mask and a cape?"

Tommy narrowed his eyes at Lovett. Sure, there was always some gossip going around the school when there was something as unusual as a new student, but these rumors were both more numerous and more ridiculous than he would have expected. He should have realized that there were too many ridiculous rumors to have come out of nowhere.

"What do you think, am I more of a Crimson Charm or a Maroon… well, a Maroon something?” he asked, posing more as if he were going to partake in a duel in a bad movie. Tommy itched to correct his stance— if he actually tried to fight like that he’d be giving up the use of his left hand in defense altogether— but reminded himself that it probably wouldn’t be appreciated.

"Just how many of the rumors are you responsible for?" Tommy asked instead.

"Now, Tommy, that would be telling! You're the master spy, you figure it out!” Lovett looked like he was barely holding back his laughter. Tommy couldn’t help but wonder if things had gone differently, maybe he would have been in on the joke, coming up with fantastic origin stories for Lovett, instead of outside of it, hearing them second-hand.

Tommy glared then said smooth as could be, "I thought of one. You know, for Maroon.”

"Oh?" Lovett asked, sounding distrusting. 

"Yeah, how about the Maroon Moron?" he said, laughing gleefully when Lovett's response was to flip him off.

—

Jon was in detention again when it was time for the first trip into town; he’d taken the blame when Lovett had been passing notes in English class. Passing notes wasn’t the problem, of course. The problem was being obvious enough at it that someone could catch you. The sole positive from the whole situation was that Jon had managed to eat the note and keep from adding embarrassment to his failure, though he was spitting up paper bits through the rest of class.

“Gotta get Lovett some edible paper,” he said to Tommy after class. “That was pulpy.”

Tommy ignored the suggestion in favor of pointing out that Jon wouldn't be able to make good on their plans to go to town. Plouffe had come down way harder on Jon than he would have on Lovett, Tommy was sure. Lovett was new and maybe his old school hadn’t been as good— Tommy was starting to doubt that they’d taught him anything worth learning— but Jon should have known better.

“You should have let him learn his lesson,” Tommy said.

“Come on, give him a break,” Jon said easily. “He’s new.”

It was easy for Jon to say. He wasn’t the one who had to live with Lovett.

Tommy had pretty much settled on skipping the trip now that Jon couldn’t go. Miller wasn’t going either and Cody was working on his senior project, so there wasn’t much point. It wasn’t like he needed anything. There would be other trips, and besides, he’d overheard Lovett talking excitedly about it, so he knew he’d have his room to himself for the day if he stayed. He could sleep in and then get a head start on the extra project he was working on for Professor Rhodes, but when he said as much to Jon, Jon made a face. Apparently, Jon wanted half a dozen things he couldn’t get at the school store and he’d been hoping Tommy would pick them up for him.

“Make Miller get it, or Lovett,” Tommy said. 

“You know Miller isn’t going, and Lovett won’t know where to go,” Jon said, looking disappointed in him. Jon was unfairly good at looking disappointed.

“Draw him a map, I’m not your errand boy.”

“You could always go with him,” Jon suggested and Tommy knew that voice. Jon was definitely trying to manipulate him into something. “You could show him around.”

Tommy snorted. “Yeah, right. That’s even less likely than me going to town in the first place.”

“Come on, man, you know I have detention,” Jon complained.

Tommy leveled a look at him because he’d made his opinion clear on the matter even if he did feel a tiny bit hypocritical. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t gotten multiple detentions over the years for similar infractions, minor and otherwise, without even considering the detentions they should have gotten except for their skill— and sometimes luck— at not getting caught.

“Tommy, please,” Jon asked. Tommy had known he was probably going to give in no matter what. For that matter, Jon knew him well enough to know it too, but that was the point when he didn’t feel like arguing any further.

“You owe me,” he caved. He couldn’t help feeling the tiniest bit, weirdly upset when Jon thanked him instead of pushing the idea of showing Lovett around again.

—

Tommy lingered over breakfast with Cody and Miller so long that he was almost late to the bus. It would have served Jon right, though Tommy probably would have felt guilty enough that he would have ended up liberating a bike or walking or seeing if any of the teachers were heading to town. Still, almost late wasn't actually late even if it meant he was stuck with a seat towards the front of the bus.

He had almost been late, but he wasn't the last one to make it. That was Lovett, who showed up just after the doors closed. He pounded on them until the driver opened the doors, his face sweaty and his hair a frizzy mass of uncontrolled curls. An ignoble part of Tommy considered ducking his head or turning and looking out the window or putting his bag on the seat next to him to keep Lovett from sitting there. He didn't exactly have a chance to decide what action, if any, to take: before he'd thought them through, Lovett sat next to one of the other students in the very first row, just a few seats in front of Tommy. He told himself he felt relieved that Lovett didn’t end up next to him even if that didn't quite seem right. 

Tommy figured that would be it. The town, small as it was, was still big enough that they could avoid each other. It wasn't like Tommy didn't have a certain degree of skill at avoiding people when he wanted. Lovett dashed off the bus, so Tommy waited until everyone else got off and dispersed, pretending to be checking for something in his backpack. That turned out to be a mistake though because it meant he was the only one still there to see Lovett run into some of the town kids.

Running into them, at least, was what it would have seemed like to someone less observant, and also less familiar with the rivalry between the town kids and school kids. Tommy saw the way the one planted himself in front of Lovett when Lovett wasn’t looking where he was going, while another flanked Lovett from his left. Besides, he recognized these particular kids; he and Jon had a feud with them going back as long as they’d been old enough to be allowed to go to town. No matter how much Lovett annoyed him, he was still one of them. Four on one wasn’t fair, either, Tommy thought, shoring up his justification, even as he was already heading over to where Lovett was standing. Lovett was bristling at whatever they were saying— Tommy couldn’t quite hear them— and holding his backpack, but hadn’t bent to pick up what had spilled, a surprisingly good instinct. Robinson wouldn’t think twice of taking advantage if Lovett left himself vulnerable. 

Tommy bent and grabbed a pen that was rolling across his path. He put it in his pocket and continued walking until he was right behind Lovett, doing his best to look intimidating. He stood square in a proper stance in case things went south, and nodded at them like everything was normal.

“Robinson, tell your mom I said hi,” he said without thinking about how much it might sound like a ‘your mom’ joke until Lovett snickered and he had to elbow him. Mrs. Robinson was the town librarian and Tommy and Favs had been doing research there the year before last to learn more about the town’s layout as part of their plan to get even with the town kids. They’d been quiet and polite enough that she’d absolutely loved them. Favs more, of course, but she’d liked Tommy too, enough that she tried to encourage Robinson to hang out with them instead of his usual friends, which had been awkward and also made researching how to get even with his gang more challenging. In the end they’d managed though, and since then they’d had a detente.

Robinson took a step forward but Tommy didn't move, calling his bluff. 

He scowled and said, "Come on, let’s not waste time on these losers,” to his friends, before adding, “And watch where you’re going next time,” to Lovett. 

Tommy was ready to grab the back of Lovett’s shirt if necessary, to hold him back, but he just waited until they were out of sight before saying, “I didn’t need your help,” to Tommy, bending down to pick up his stuff. Tommy bent to help him, and once they’d collected everything, he looked Lovett over, trying to figure out what had given him away as one of them. He couldn't see anything— Robinson must have noticed him getting off the bus. He hadn't made the mistake of wearing his uniform like Jon and Tommy had the first time they'd gone to town though he was wearing some truly hideous baggy maroon pants. Tommy was almost more annoyed that there wasn't anything obvious that twigged him about Lovett not belonging, because it didn’t fit what he’d told himself about Lovett.

"Just, be more careful. They don't like us," Tommy said finally. 

"Don't like _me_ , you mean," he corrected with a twist to the word ‘me’ Tommy wasn't sure he understood. 

"Us," he repeated. "They think we're a bunch of rich, trust fund kids because that's what the school says we are."

Lovett was clearly still calming down, but he said, "Well, they're not _all_ wrong," with a sideways look at Tommy. They weren’t friends, and it wasn’t the same as Jon twitting him about it, but for some reason instead of feeling annoyed he felt a burst of warmth, like it was some sort of overture, so Tommy bumped Lovett's shoulder. "Yeah, yeah, I know, the WASPiest."

Just as Lovett said, “Hey, you want to—" Tommy started, "Well, I've gotta go get—" and they both broke off. When Lovett didn’t continue Tommy finished, "some stuff for Jon."

"Oh, yeah,” Lovett mumbled. If Tommy didn’t know better, he would have sworn he looked disappointed. "Well, see you back at school, I guess," Lovett said before turning to go. 

Tommy headed in the opposite direction and then doubled back once he was sure Lovett wouldn't be paying attention anymore. He was just making sure Lovett made it wherever he was going safely, he told himself. Once he saw Lovett was in the bookstore and out of harm's way, Tommy sprinted off to grab all of Jon’s stupid requests as quickly as he could, and if after he was done, he returned to stake out the bookstore and make sure Lovett didn’t get in anymore trouble, well, it wasn’t like there was anyone to know.

—

Things had felt a little less tense since the trip to town, but when Tommy almost tripped over the heap of stuff as he entered their room, sending an empty can clattering across the floor as he tried to catch his balance, it was just too much. He had no idea how Lovett had smuggled in so much Diet Coke, but there were empty cans on every flat surface on Lovett’s side of the room. Between that, the plates from when Lovett snuck off to his room instead of eating in the cafeteria, and the papers everywhere— there were sheets of loose leaf, notepads, and even scraps, all covered in Lovett’s cramped, unreadable writing— their room was disgusting. Tommy had tried to let the mess go in order to preserve the peace, but every time Tommy had to move a pile of clothes or move a plate before he sat, he felt more frustrated. It wasn’t like Favs had ever been that tidy, but he'd had a few years of roommates to learn to keep to his side of the room with his mess; Lovett's things were taking over, as loud and exuberant as he was. Tripping over the pile of Lovett’s stuff after returning to the room from a long study session was the can of Diet Coke that broke the camel's back.

"Lovett," Tommy said, poking at the lump on his bed, only to realize it was a pile of dirty clothes covered by the blanket. He groaned. No one had been in to inspect their room yet or caught a glimpse through an open door, but that was luck. With this big a mess, there was no way demerits would fall on Lovett alone, especially since he was new and the expectation everywhere Tommy turned was that he'd teach Lovett all the unspoken rules needed to succeed at NSA, no matter how little inclined Lovett was to even acknowledge him. 

There was really only one option, much as Tommy hated it. 

Maybe he'll take it as a peace offering, Tommy thought hopefully, as he began trying to figure out where best to start.

—

It was late, just minutes before curfew, when Tommy heard the door open with a creak. Lovett had complained to himself about it incessantly, threatening to have his parents send him WD-40 if housekeeping didn’t do something about it, but Tommy liked the squeak— when you knew what was going to make noise, it could serve as a warning rather than an annoyance. He’d been one of the first in his year to learn the pattern of squeaks on the stairs and how to hop down, avoiding them in a strangely choreographed dance he didn’t think he’d ever forget. Lovett, of course, rushed them all, and if Tommy didn’t know better, he’d think he was seeking out the squeaks and groans with the cacophony he made.

There was the thump of Lovett’s bag on his desk, a pause, and then, “What the fuck? Did you touch my stuff?” 

His voice broke towards the end and if they’d been friends, Tommy might have teased him about it, but they weren’t.

"Maybe you don't care about being here," Tommy said, frustration so strong he couldn't keep his voice steady, "but I do and I can't live like this.”

“That doesn’t mean you can touch my stuff!”

“Look, it’s only a matter of time before they inspect our room and if they’d seen the way it was, we’d be stuck cleaning it together and in detention for a month. Anyone else would thank me.”

Lovett was frantically flipping through the scraps of paper Tommy had put on his desk. “What did you throw out? Did you read my notes?” He shot off accusations rapid fire.

"I wouldn't!" Tommy said indignantly; he hadn’t done anything with the papers beyond shuffling them into neat piles on Lovett's desk, even the ones that were ripped or stained or crumpled, not that he could have have deciphered Lovett’s writing if he tried. “I got rid of the cans and the dishes, but that’s it.”

He cut himself off before he said anything truly mean, closed his eyes and counted to ten.

When he opened his eyes again, Lovett was calmer, and looking at him almost kindly which freaked Tommy out even more. 

"I guess if you want to be my maid, nothing's stopping you," he said and it didn't have as much bite as Tommy would have expected. "Just don't read my stuff!" he warned sounding almost friendly.

After that, it was like something broke, and Lovett was finally talking to Tommy. Well, at least a third of the time he was talking at Tommy; Tommy had never met anyone who could take off on a rant with quite so little prompting, or such enthusiasm, but it was better than the silent treatment he had been getting, so he wasn’t complaining. 

 

**The Second Quarter**

The bell rang and Tommy began shoveling things in his bag; Professor Biden didn’t really care if you packed up early, but somehow Tommy always felt guilty if he did, despite the tendency for his long, rambling stories to continue past the bell. They were always interesting stories, despite not being as focused on the topic at hand as they could have been, but he was going to have to book it if he wanted to make it to his next class. Professor McConnell was not a teacher you wanted to be late for, which meant sacrificing neatness in favor of expediency. As long as he was quick, he would have enough time to straighten things out when he got there.

“Class dismissed,” Professor Biden said needlessly, then followed it up by saying, “Mr. Vietor, please stay a moment,” and Tommy slowed. It was the first day of class, he couldn’t have done anything wrong yet, he reassured himself.

He finished packing his bag, more orderly this time since he was going to be late no matter what now, then waited by Professor Biden’s desk while Cody asked a question and received a long, rambling answer, while Tommy did his best not to fidget.

“Mr. Vietor,” the professor said, getting his attention. “So you’re rooming with Mr. Lovett.”

It was a statement, not a question, but Tommy answered, “Yes, sir,” all the same.

“Good, good. Now, I’m sure you’ve realized that Mr. Lovett’s background is… well, a bit unorthodox.”

Tommy didn’t know what to say to that; Lovett wasn’t like any of the other students, sure, but he didn’t know why, or what sort of background Professor Biden, of all people, would call “unorthodox.” For all Lovett talked, sometimes Tommy felt like he barely knew him at all. He decided that discretion might be the best course of action so he didn’t say anything while doing his best to make it clear he was listening intently.

Luckily, it seemed Biden hadn’t been expecting an answer. “Unorthodox, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. He … didn’t do so well last quarter, particularly in Stealth, and you know as well as I do, we all sink or swim together. You’re one of the best students in your year—”

Tommy felt his face begin to burn slightly.

“— which makes you the best choice to make sure he does better. He needs a guy in his corner.”

Tommy was totally and completely fucked. Sure, Lovett was actually talking to him now, and it had seemed like too much of a hassle to switch rooms, but they weren’t exactly friends either. He still got the sense that Lovett didn’t entirely like him.

“Something wrong, son?” asked Professor Biden and Tommy shook his head to clear it then said, “No, Sir, no problem. I’d be glad to tutor Lovett, but wouldn’t it be better to have someone in his classes tutor him?”

“If I thought that, I’d be asking someone in his classes, wouldn’t I? Now, you’ll have a pass to get out of your study hall and you and Mr. Lovett can use room 25.”

“Yes, Sir,” Tommy said because he couldn’t tell Professor Biden no. Instead he accepted the pass for his study hall teacher and another for Professor McConnell and took off as speedily as he could— luckily, he knew a shortcut through a secret passage. If he was quick enough, he might be able to save the pass for another day.

—

Tommy had been considering the best way to approach Lovett about tutoring since Professor Biden had suggested it, but now that Lovett was talking to him, it was like he was making up for lost time and Tommy found it challenging to get a word in edgewise.

“Lovett,” he repeated for the third time in the row, in the middle of a rant about how what the school had served for lunch wasn’t worthy of being called pizza.

“Might as well have gotten it from Connecticut,” he said before he finally stopped, tilting his head towards Tommy in a way that was a terrible tell and not at all endearing.

When Tommy didn’t say anything right away, Lovett said, “You wanted something?”

“Listen, Professor Biden thinks you need tutoring and he asked me to—”

“The great Tommy Vietor to tutor little old me?” Jon asked, fluttering his eyelashes at Tommy coquettishly. Tommy knew he was being mocked, but he couldn’t completely contain the smile that seemed to come more and more easily when Jon joked with him.

“It’ll get you out of study hall, and maybe I can help you get your marks up in Stealth,” Tommy offered. “You have Hagel for that, right?” Since they had Lovett playing catch up, he’d be with the sophomores or the juniors, more likely than not.

He didn’t exactly want to tutor Lovett. Lovett was a lot even at the best of times and they’d only just started to get along. Having to tutor him in a subject he didn’t seem to care about wasn’t going to make rooming with him any easier. At the same time, if he’d tried to get out of it, he felt like he would have been disappointing Professor Biden.

“How did you—” Lovett cut himself off. “Spy school. Right. I go to spy school now. Of course, you know I’m failing Stealth.”

“Not failing,” Tommy said, “just—”

“No more about my failings, I’ll do it! How bad can it be?”

Tommy groaned. He was doomed.

—

Bad was how bad it could be. Very, very bad. The first time Tommy tried to talk to Lovett about blending in, Lovett managed to have a ridiculously memorable “listening face” look, but worse still, he managed to fall over his own feet while standing still and that was actually one of the high points of the lesson. He decided to back off and work on something more basic, so they tried meditating for a period to get Lovett into a better headspace for covert activity. The first time they tried meditating, Lovett ended up trying to sneak off halfway through which Tommy would have counted as a win if it hadn’t been for the fact that Lovett had taken out half the desks in the process. A successful escape generally involved _not_ alerting everyone within two classrooms of the attempt.

The second time Tommy tried to get Lovett to meditate, he fell asleep. Tommy didn’t even notice until he started making these little huffing noises— he was so used to meditating to try and control his own wayward thoughts that he’d gone into a meditative state himself when he’d started instructing Lovett. When he heard the soft, wheezing sounds Lovett was making, his eyes flew open, worried that Lovett might be having an asthma attack and frantically trying to remember if he’d ever seen him with an inhaler, only to see that Lovett was listing to one side. Tommy couldn’t separate the annoyance at Lovett falling asleep from the relief that he was okay.

Worse, Tommy couldn't bring himself to wake him. Lovett had been frantically studying for a test the night before when Tommy had fallen asleep and he’d already— still?— been studying when Tommy had woken up the next morning. Tommy would be rich— well, richer— if he had a nickel for every time Lovett had nearly missed breakfast or ended up munching on toast one of the frosh passed him in the hall, but he couldn’t remember a single time Lovett had woken up before him. Anyway, Lovett must have been exhausted to fall asleep sitting up, even if he was leaning back against the wall.

For whatever reason, for sympathy, or because he was still in a strange, introspective state, Tommy spent the rest of the period quietly watching Lovett sleep, nominally in between revising a paper, though loathe as he would have been to admit it, the paper spent most of its time on his lap. It was more of a decoy than anything else; there in case Lovett woke up unexpectedly or someone came into the room and caught him. Not that he was doing anything wrong, or that it would matter if someone caught him, it just felt odd to be watching Lovett sleep.

Lovett asleep really was a different person, he thought, when the emotions always running across his face were absent. As Tommy let his thoughts drift, he found himself wishing he could have both Lovetts, the one with the triumphant smile and quick wit and this quiet, softer one too. He shook his head as if to clear the thought. He didn’t have Lovett at all, he was pretty sure Lovett barely tolerated him, and besides, what would “having” Lovett even mean?

Lovett made him feel confused and agitated in a way he couldn’t remember feeling before— not even when he and Jon and Emily had been breaking into the mayor’s office or before the inter-school dance last year when half his classmates had been nervous wrecks— and he hated it. He’d never had his heart race like this from anything except when he was exercising. He felt out of control around Lovett, and if Tommy couldn't control his mental and physical reactions to one guy it didn’t bode well for his future as a spy. The out-of-control feeling reminded him of how he’d felt when he’d first started at NSA, homesick and unsure, faced with the unknown and no knowledge of how to handle it.

Tommy let out a shaky breath and forced himself to let the thought go, then checked his watch and realized the bell was about to ring. He reached out and touched Lovett’s shoulder to gently shake him awake. Lovett leaned into the touch instead of waking up, so Tommy decided to change strategies, grabbing a textbook from his bag and slamming it loudly, once and then again until Lovett almost fell over.

“Five more minutes,” he murmured, and Tommy felt another pang of inexplicable want for more of Lovett like this, as if he didn’t see Lovett asleep in bed every morning. Somehow, now it felt different. Something about the way he’d turned at Tommy’s touch, the way his voice sounded, full of sleep, provided a glimpse of intimacy that left Tommy feeling unmoored. . 

“Lovett, you fell asleep during meditation,” he said, keeping his voice flat and disapproving for fear of something he didn't entirely understand leaking out.

“Fuck,” Lovett said, his eyes popping open.

“At least you didn’t try to escape this time,” Tommy said, the words a joke that would only be funny to him, at his own expense.

“I _am_ trying,” Lovett said and he sounded so unexpectedly vulnerable Tommy couldn’t keep himself from saying, “I know,” reassuringly, as surprised to say it as Lovett seemed to be to hear it. “I’ll try and come up with something better next time, but I’m going to be late to class if I don’t book it.” 

With that, he jumped up leaving the room, Lovett, and all the feelings he wasn’t willing to engage with behind.

—

The next tutoring session, Lovett burst into the room and threw a paper on Tommy’s desk.

“This is bullshit," he said, angrily. At the top of the paper, in red pen, there was a circled C with a note to “stick to the assignment” underneath. Tommy skimmed the first few lines, which were all about someone named Rubbit, before finally asking warily, “What _was_ the assignment?”

“To create a full fleshed cover, which I did! There was no missing flesh from Rubbit!”

“Lovett,” Tommy said, but before he could get any further, Lovett corrected, “No, Rubbit!” and Tommy couldn’t help himself, he burst out laughing, right in Lovett’s face.

Every time he almost calmed down enough to ask what Lovett had been thinking, the look on Lovett’s face set him off again.

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” he said pissily.

“Who’s on first,” Tommy offered up only for Lovett to say, “Tommy, you know I don’t do baseball,” which just set him off all over again.

“Abbott and Costello, Lovett,” Tommy explained. “I thought you were the comedy expert.”

“I was riffing on your joke, _Thomas_ ,” which Tommy knew had a fifty percent chance of meaning he was fooling around; unfortunately, the other fifty percent was a chance that Tommy was about to end up getting the silent treatment again. “Besides, some of us aren’t 80 year old men.”

Tommy let that one slide in favor of asking, “Why on earth did you name your cover Rubbit?”

“Because it rhymed,” Tommy made a face, and Lovett said defensively, “It almost rhymed, and everyone knows the best lies are close to the truth!”

He was definitely blustering to hide something.

“And?”

“And I thought it sounded funny,” Lovett admitted.

“Yeah, well, you joked your way right into a C. Maybe next time you want to go to the beach, just buy a plane ticket.”

“That was terrible, Tommy. Terrible. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Really?” Tommy asked, holding up the paper. “You're going to lecture me on bad jokes?”

Tommy smiled at how pugnacious Lovett looked and then felt his skin start to flush. Before Lovett could yell at him, he started reading over the paper and said, “Yeah, you want close, but you want—” he cut himself off before he could finish saying “smart close,” and said, “like, Lo, Lo, L—” he ran through a list of names in his head, rejecting a few, “Logan!”

“Logan?”

“It starts like Lovett which increases the chances you’ll respond, but it’s not so close that it’s a dead give away. Don Logan? Ron Logan?”

“Ugh, I’ll sound like that creepy martial arts teacher with two first names,” Lovett groused, but he bent down to grab a pencil from his bag, pulled a chair up to the desk, and started scribbling over everywhere it said “Rubbit” on the paper.

Tommy hopped up on the desk itself, sitting so he had to tilt his head and read Professor Hagel’s comments upside down, which was good practice, and besides, Lovett’s arm kept brushing him when he made changes, which Tommy liked.

When they were done going over the paper, Tommy making suggestions on ways to improve the cover, Lovett looked up at Tommy and said facetiously, “my hero,” which shouldn’t have made Tommy feel like he was going to turn bright red again.

“No big,” he said, jumping off the desk. “Really, Jon’s better at this sort of thing, I mean, the writing part. Maybe he can help you next time.”

“Nope,” Lovett said. “You know that saying about how if you save a man’s life, you have to keep saving it? I’m yours now.”

“Great,” Tommy said flatly. He didn’t think that was quite how the saying went, but he didn't want to argue, not when Lovett saying it left his stomach doing somersaults. “Just what I’ve always wanted, my very own Lovett.”

“You mean your very own Logan!” Lovett corrected and Tommy met his grin with a small smile of his own. “So now that we’ve fixed my cover, the next assignment is pocket litter and—” Tommy nodded, focused on Jon’s explanation so he could figure out the best way to prod him in the right direction.

—

The more Tommy got to hang out with Lovett, the more he got to appreciate just how amusing he could be. He even made detention more bearable.

“You should have seen it, Jon, he totally took Professor McConnell down, right in the middle of detention,” Tommy said, as Lovett ducked his head. For someone who bragged on himself as much as Lovett did, sometimes he couldn’t take a compliment at all. Tommy was sure if he was the one telling the story, he’d turn it into a full-on production, a one-man, one-act play.

“It was nothing,” Lovett said, but he was grinning.

“It was amazing,” Tommy corrected him, and Lovett’s smile made his chest feel tight.

“Look, I’m just saying, if I couldn’t argue down a turtle, I’d feel a lot worse about myself,” Lovett said, laughter spilling out at his own joke despite a brief attempt to look serious.

“Oh man,” Tommy gasped out, before starting to giggle. It wasn’t even that funny, but there was something about the way Lovett looked so pleased with himself that added to the joke. He reached out and threw his arm around Lovett’s shoulders; Lovett stilled for a moment and Tommy thought he might pull away, but he didn’t. He stayed there and let Tommy collapse against him laughing, holding him up when he almost slide out of his chair altogether. Lovett waited until Tommy had almost recovered to say, “If it ever started to look like he was going to win, I could flip him on his back,” and set Tommy off again.

—

Lovett had mastered his way picking a basic lock faster than Tommy had expected even if he didn’t get anywhere near the school record. Tommy had set everything up on one of the desks for him, a lock, and all the standard tools, and when he’d told Lovett what he had planned, he’d sat down and gone straight to work. He stuck with it far longer than Tommy had the first time he’d tried to pick a lock, focused on the problem in front of him. It was fascinating to watch him direct all his attention to the lock and the picks, even more so when Tommy offered suggestions and Lovett temporarily turned his focus towards him. It almost made him nervous to feel the full force of Lovett’s attention, like it might be enough to— well, he was sure quite what, but enough to do something. Thankfully, more of Lovett’s time was spent focused on the lock than on Tommy. Lovett considered the problem from every angle with such care. Tommy imagined he could tell as Lovett came up with and discarded each new idea for how to undo the lock— his face really was entirely too expressive.

It wasn’t the most elegant lock picking Tommy had ever seen. There had been moments he’d been afraid Lovett was about to pick the lock up and bash it against the table until it opened. Ultimately, though, Lovett worked it out without taking a shortcut.

“Ha!” he exclaimed as he presented the opened lock to Tommy. “Take that!”

“Not bad,” Tommy said, before setting the next challenge in front of him, a box that was set up to spray a blue dye if you triggered it by opening the box without making sure to defuse the mechanism after picking the lock. Even though the dye boxes were typically assigned as a project in middle school, Tommy thought Lovett could benefit from the dual lessons, one in lock picking and one in caution, and he had a limited time window before the blue faces crossing campus would give away the surprise. Tommy still remembered, he’d gotten a face full of dye and been blue for a week. Somehow Favs had gotten distracted and as a result had managed to escape the brunt of it, a few blue freckles across his cheekbones the only evidence of his mistake. 

Lovett looked at the box and then up at the clock and said, “Come on, can’t I catch a break? I got the first one and the period’s almost over, I think you should reward me.”

Tommy just slid the box closer to Lovett and didn’t say anything— the temptation to ask what Lovett wanted as a reward was too great and also far too likely to end with Tommy’s face burning.

“I hate this,” Lovett said, but he fell to work quickly enough, so Tommy thought he was just exaggerating as usual. This time, Lovett worked even faster, as if having done the first lock, he’d learned the knack of it, and before Tommy can drop the hint his teacher had given them about the dye packet, Lovett had opened the box.

Somehow he managed to flip it around so it was facing Tommy, before the dye packet burst. Tommy had enough time to duck, but he still managed to get a good amount of dye on his hair, and ended up quickly stripping off his blazer and using it to keep the excess from dripping down on to his face. Bad enough he was going to spend a week with blue hair— he was going to get so much shit for this from _everyone_.

“It was booby trapped?” Lovett asked, his surprise very obviously faked. Someone must have told him about the test, Tommy figured, because otherwise, how would he have known?

“Favs tell you about the test?” Tommy asked, unable to keep the pissiness out of his voice, even if Lovett’s reaction time had been impressive. More impressive still, he’d managed to keep Tommy from realizing he’d known the secret the whole time, which Tommy wouldn’t have credited Lovett with being able to do if he hadn’t been completely taken in.

“I ain’t saying nothin’,” Lovett said petulantly and Tommy sighed. It didn’t really matter who it was— even with a warning, Lovett had managed to open the box and avoid getting stained by the dye on his first try, which wasn’t something many could claim.

When Tommy didn’t say anything, Lovett said, “Tommy, Tommy, Tommmmmy,” until Tommy looked at him again, and then asked, “You mad?”

“Nah,” Tommy relented, because really, how could he be when he’d been planning on doing the same thing to Lovett? “It’s nothing that won’t wash out—” eventually, at least, although he was pretty sure he was going to get razzed by everyone in his year before it did. “You got me this time.”

Lovett grinned then. “You were hoisted by your own petard,” he said just before the bell rang, then added, “Well, I’m off to class, good luck with that!”

—

Tommy opened the door to their room to find everything rearranged; his desk and Lovett’s were shoved together in the middle of the room and instead of the very neat stack of books he’d left on his, there was some sort of a board game set up with three guys he knew by name alone sitting around the desks. They were all at least a grade below him. Then Lovett popped up, waving a piece victoriously.

“Found it!” he exclaimed.

“What’s going on?” Tommy asked, trying to sound casual, but pretty sure he’d slipped into what Lovett had once described as his ‘serial killer voice’.

“It’s game night, haven’t you seen a board game before, Tommy? Do they not have them in Bahw-stan?” Lovett asked in the worst attempt at a Massachusetts accent Tommy had ever heard before slipping back into his normal voice and saying, “I thought you were trained to recognize things.”

“I expect everything back the way it was when you’re done,” he said in a deliberately neutral tone, ignoring Lovett’s comments, leaving the ‘or else’ unspoken. One of the underclassmen squeaked and Tommy had to fight a smile. He still had it.

“Yeah, yeah, no problem,” Lovett said, barely even paying attention to Tommy before going back to explaining whatever the game was. Tommy watched silently for another minute then Lovett called, “In or out, you’re freaking everyone out standing in the door watching like that,” so he left and headed towards his secret bolthole, even though part of him was tempted to find a chair and join in, more because he wanted to watch Lovett explain what was going on than because he had any interest in learning how to play.

—

Tommy studied a lot. He knew people thought he was weird for it but it wasn't like he was a legacy or anything, not like Cody or Miller. Sure, his family had been in this country for fucking ever but they hadn't been doing this. He hadn't even really known this was a possibility and then he fell into it— right place, right time and suddenly he knew what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. It was a scary realization for a kid to have. So he studied and worked to impress and tried the whole time to give the impression that he wasn't worried about it because maybe if he worked hard enough he could catch up to where he thought he should be. The studying helped push aside other worries too, like whether he would be able to live up to the job— if he were truly the kind of person who could sacrifice everything, if need be, for his country— and the knowledge that it wasn't if but when he would lose friends. He kept studying even when he'd more than caught up because if he studied all he could at least he wouldn't have that on his head.

That was how he first found his way to the roof— the library was only open so late and his dorm mates complained about the light when he studied too late. Not only that, there was curfew to worry about, so he couldn’t study just anywhere. He suspected the roof was easy to get to on purpose— it was a school for spies, they weren't beyond setting up scenarios to test their skills, or to show them not to overestimate themselves— but he'd never seen anyone else up there. Possibly they were smarter than to break curfew somewhere so easy to be cornered, though Tommy had always taken precautions to keep from being trapped. He'd never shown anyone, not even Jon, but he had a sudden thought that he wanted to show Lovett. 

He would probably hate it, Tommy thought, or at least not appreciate what it meant that Tommy was showing him. Lovett was inspiring bad habits in him and it was going to become a problem if he didn't watch it. He made himself focus on the fact that showing Lovett would mean interrupting the quiet of his sanctuary and Lovett would probably forget to follow the precautions Tommy took. They'd end up getting caught and called out on the carpet in front of Headmaster Obama though Tommy didn't let himself dwell too much on what they might be doing on the roof to let him get distracted enough that he would get caught. Lovett’s mere presence would be distracting enough: everything about Lovett was distracting.

—

Tommy held out his hands and smiled as encouragingly as he could at Lovett. "Come on," he said. “You'll get it this time.”

"I don't get how this helps me be a better spy," Lovett grumbled, but he held out his hands so they were hovering over Tommy's. Too far for the game, really, but Tommy could work with it. 

"It's about reading the other person and responding to their micro reactions."

"The only reaction I'm having is pain," Lovett said, which was so far from true Tommy had to work not to laugh— first of all, he hadn't been hitting him _that_ hard, and second, Lovett's face was an open book and Tommy was pretty sure it wasn't just because he spent so much time watching him. Which was the point of the exercise. It wasn’t just getting Lovett to improve his reading of other people; the point was to improve his tells at the same time. Unfortunately for Lovett, Tommy had started with his hands underneath and Lovett hadn’t been able to read him well enough to pull his hands away in time to avoid getting slapped. 

“Just be glad it’s me and not Professor Biden,” Tommy said and Lovett snorted.

“Hey, he may be old, but he doesn’t pull his punches and I was the lucky one who got picked to pair up with the teacher.”

Tommy waited until the exact moment Lovett got caught up in the story and without pausing, flipped his hands up and slapped his knuckles.

“Ow,” Lovett said, rubbing where Tommy had hit. He was being a baby, his hands weren’t even red. Tommy already had his hands back down in place and just said, “Again,” and waited for Lovett to gingerly hold his hands out over his.

—

It was a gorgeous day, unseasonably warm even if most of the trees had lost their leaves. Tommy was taking advantage of having finished an exam early by lounging on the roof with a book. It was nice to have some peace and quiet for a change, he thought.

He had possibly let his guard down too much because he wasn’t at all prepared for a shadow to fall across him or to hear, “Well, well, well, look who’s cutting class.”

Tommy practically jumped out of his skin. "What are you doing here?" Tommy demanded when he calmed down enough to talk, though his heart was still racing. He’d managed not to scream but only just, and his face must have been a sight. Tommy might have been proud of Lovett's clearly improved stealth skills, if he wasn't so annoyed with himself for being caught off guard. 

“I could ask you the same question,” Lovett said.

It was juvenile, but Tommy couldn’t help retorting, “I asked you first.”

“Just enjoying the fresh air," Lovett grinned. 

"You should be in sixth period," Tommy said. He thought for a second then said, "Stealth."

"It's really creepy when you do that," Lovett said. "Do you have everyone's schedules memorized or just mine?"

Tommy did not have everyone’s schedule memorized— he knew who was in which class with him and both Jons’ schedules, but that was it, not that he was planning to admit it. He thought back over the curriculum and what he’d been tutoring Jon in lately and realized that it was probably around time for the unit on evasion. He peered over the edge of the building. After a few moments of concentrated looking, he let himself unfocus and wait for something to draw his attention. He saw the underclassmen moving across the campus, carefully checking the grounds in a grid pattern. 

"So Professor Hagel set you to hide? What are the boundaries?"

"Come on, this isn't tutoring," Lovett complained. "You don't have to be practicing every moment of the day."

Tommy waited. He had learned it was the best way to handle a resistant Lovett, who couldn't be described as patient at the best of times. 

It worked. Lovett rattled off a familiar list of criteria designed to limit and test the person hiding, ending, as Tommy expected with "and the boundaries are the buildings and the edge of campus."

"So how'd you get up here?" Tommy asked. He was pretty sure no one had discovered the grappling hook he'd pilfered and hid and even more sure Lovett wouldn't have been able to make it up the side of the building with it without being discovered. 

Lovett waggled his eyebrows and didn't say a word, which Tommy was sure meant he'd cheated. He had to admire Lovett's audacity and ultimate commitment to the letter— if not the spirit— of the rules of the game. 

Tommy looked back over the edge and said, "It would be pretty easy to get their attention," casually.

"Snitches get stitches, Thomas," Lovett said but he didn't look too concerned. Tommy figured he realized there wasn't much of a likelihood of him saying anything at all. 

"Well, you might want to get down because they're looking this way," Tommy said, laughing when Lovett hit the ground more quickly than he would have imagined. 

"That was impressive," he said, dryly enough that Lovett seemed unsure if he meant it or not. 

"Hey, there's extra credit on the line and I could use it. Hagel has it out for me."

Tommy bit back on a retort that not wanting Lovett to die because he hadn't been trained properly wasn't exactly having it out for him, or if it was, Tommy had it out for him too. If he started in on how inappropriately lightly Lovett seemed to take everything, he'd never stop. Instead, he went back to his book, ignoring Lovett, who seemed content with having had the last word.

The silence was strangely companionable after a while. Tommy looked over at Lovett occasionally, to see if he had dozed off, but he hadn’t. He was scribbling away at something—Tommy assumed it was a homework assignment, but he didn’t ask, just went back to his book.

"Trains are cool," Tommy said out of nowhere and Lovett laughed. "And people say _I'm_ a dork."

Tommy let out a huff— he hadn’t meant to say the train thing out loud and once he had, he’d hoped Lovett would just ignore him— and Lovett said, "Oh come on, don't pout." And then when Tommy still didn't say anything, he said, ”Fine, tell me why trains are cool, but no guarantees I'm going to actually listen.”

That was how they passed the rest of the afternoon, Tommy reading interesting facts about trains from his book, and Lovett riffing on them and making Tommy laugh. The sad thing was, it was probably one of the most enjoyable afternoons Tommy had had in awhile.

After, Tommy showed Lovett one of the easier ways down from the roof— he had to dare him to make the first jump but after that he was fine until it came to climbing down the the tree. Tommy ended up going first so he could spot Lovett, even though there wasn't much he could do if Lovett fell from the top. He was fine though. He made it almost all the way down, then got stuck on the last branch. Tommy could see his arms straining as he hung there, his feet dangling in front of Tommy’s face.

“It's not that far,” Tommy said. “Just let go.”

“No, thanks,” Lovett said. “It's okay, I live here now. Just me and the birds.”

Tommy rolled his eyes and wrapped his arms around Lovett’s legs before he fell off and broke something. Lovett squeaked in surprise, and Tommy said, “Now will you let go?”

Lovett did. Tommy supported him enough that Lovett could slide down against him, ending in a weird, awkward embrace, Tommy wrapped around Lovett from behind. Tommy jumped back quickly, letting Lovett go, then reached out an arm to steady him when he almost fell because Tommy had let go too quickly.

"Thanks," Lovett mumbled. 

"No problem," Tommy said. He was blushing and he wasn't even sure why. 

Before Lovett left to collect his extra credit, Tommy reminded him he didn't have to say where he'd been, just that he'd obeyed the boundaries, and then added impulsively, "I study up there, on the roof sometimes."

"Yeah?" Lovett asked

"Yeah," Tommy said and then Lovett smiled at him, this small smile that felt more real than anything Tommy had seen before. 

"Guess I know where to go if I want to learn more about trains then," Lovett said before walking away. Tommy knew he was smiling like an idiot but he didn't care.

—

After the roof incident, Tommy decided they should spend at least one tutoring session on the proper use of a grappling hook. It was not going well. For all Lovett seemed to be good at things that required logic and reason, at least once he buckled down and actually applied himself, he always seemed awkward in his body, as if he wasn’t quite comfortable with himself. It was such a contradiction with how Lovett seemed to be able to origami himself into any number of positions while sitting in a chair.

Tommy had given Lovett a lecture on how to throw for different types of targets: underhand for something low, overhand if it was higher, and then using the rope to swing the hook if it was higher still. He’d felt dumb doing it; based on everything he’d seen, Lovett had a good grasp on physics, at least theoretically. It turned out, theoretically was the limit of Lovett’s understanding. They’d started with a high target, the roof itself, but when Lovett couldn’t manage to swing the hook well enough to hit that, Tommy had moved them to lower and lower targets until they’d ended up with a tree branch. Lovett should have been able to do it. A middle schooler should have been able to do it. He just kept missing or hitting branches other than the one Tommy pointed out. It wouldn’t have been so bad except he’d decided to try and scale the rope while the hook was haphazardly anchored to a branch that was clearly not sufficient to hold anyone’s weight.

“Lovett, you’re going to hurt yourself,” Tommy said looking up worriedly at the branch as Lovett hovered a foot off the ground.

“So I did it, are we good now?” Lovett asked, thankfully jumping down before he could get hurt.

“No. Do you realize how dangerous that can be,” Tommy gestured at the grappling hook, “if you don’t don’t use it properly?”

“Hey, it worked! What’s your problem?” Lovett asked. “So I’m not good at this, big deal. It’s not like I _wanna_ do this.”

Tommy wasn’t sure if Lovett meant learn how to use a grappling hook or be at the school at all, but he couldn’t help asking, “If you don’t want to do this, why are you here?” out of frustration. If Lovett didn’t want to learn, there were other things Tommy could be using his time for instead of trying to catch someone up who only seemed to care half the time. If Lovett didn’t want to learn, why was he even at this school? It didn’t make sense, and he’d managed to put the thought aside, time and time again, but he kept coming back to it. He wasn’t a transfer student and he didn’t know anything he should have known by now about spycraft. Something about Lovett made Tommy think about the scenarios their professors would set up where there were small details that were off, the sort of details that didn’t seem important until it was too late. Details could get a spy killed. 

Lovett _would_ get a spy killed, if his attitude didn’t improve, whether it was himself or someone else, and Tommy knew he would feel responsible when it happened. 

“Because I had a choice about it?” Lovett said, but when Tommy tried to push him further and figure out exactly what he meant by that, Lovett changed the subject and refused to revisit it, babbling about everything but what he’d meant. Tommy gave up in favor of retrieving the grappling hook and demonstrating a proper throw for Lovett before making him try again.

When he still failed, Tommy moved towards him, only to have him back away.

“Whoa Tommy, what are you doing?” Lovett asked. He looked like nothing so much as a nervous cat, shoulders tense and eyes a little wild.

“Making sure you can do this properly,” Tommy said grimly, then positioned himself behind Lovett and herded him into the proper spot, close beneath the branch. He placed one hand on Lovett’s left shoulder, and the other around his opposite wrist. Tommy was a lefty, so it didn’t quite feel natural, but he could make it work. 

“Isn’t this too close?” Lovett asked, and Tommy wasn’t sure if he meant to each other or the tree, but either way, the answer was the same.

“No,” Tommy said. “Come on, relax.”

Lovett felt incredibly tense in his arms. Normally, Tommy would have waited and tried to get Lovett to calm down, but it was like Lovett had passed his nervous energy on to Tommy. At least that was what he told himself, even if part of him knew it wasn’t true. His throat felt dry, but swallowing didn’t help. It just made him more conscious of how dry his throat felt and then how loud his heartbeat felt in his ears, but none of it was really because Lovett’s nerves were contagious. It meant something else altogether that just being that close to Lovett felt like too much to handle, but he couldn’t let himself think about it or he’d never be able to stop thinking about it.

“Just shake it off,” Tommy said, almost as much to himself as to Lovett. He made himself step back for a moment, hoping it would be enough to relieve the tension from the moment. When he moved forward again, Lovett felt at least a little more relaxed, so Tommy corrected his stance and then helped him practice how to move his arms.

“Okay, this time let it go,” Tommy said and Lovett actually listened. They watched as the hook swung through the air, this time perfectly landing on the right branch. 

“I did it!” Lovett exclaimed.

“You did,” Tommy said, proudly, even if Lovett still had quite a bit of work to do.

Tommy should have stepped back once the throw was done, and he wasn’t quite sure why he hadn’t, but it was a good thing because it meant he could stop Lovett when he went to climb without testing to make sure the hook was secure.

“Always make sure it’s secure before you trust it,” Tommy said and Lovett rolled his eyes, but he listened to what Tommy said which was the important part.

—

Tommy was running out of ideas for how to make Lovett take Stealth seriously. He was getting better- Tommy really thought he was- but his grades weren’t showing it. Maybe Lovett was right and Professor Hagel did have it out for him.

So he was in a holding pattern, reviewing Lovett’s work and pointing out where it could be better, and trying to get him in the right mindset to think like a spy. Last tutoring session they’d played Concentration, which Lovett had been shockingly good at, and then, when he’d managed an unbelievable streak at that and proclaimed it boring, they’d switched to Go Fish, mostly because they lacked the chips for poker. That was when Tommy found out that Lovett knew how to count cards, leaving him extra glad he’d refused Lovett’s suggestion of strip poker.

Lovett walked in the classroom, took one look at Tommy and said, “Not the hitting game again,” in a put upon voice. Tommy hadn’t been planning on it, but he couldn’t pass up an opening like that.

“Remember,” he said holding his hands out palms up. “It’s about observing people.”

Lovett held his hands out the same way, and said, "Come on, it's gotta be my turn by now.”

Tommy shrugged and flipped his hands over, a reasonable distance away. He couldn’t help smirking and saying, "This is going to take two seconds,” even if it wasn’t the most mature thing he could have said. Lovett seemed to provoke the most childish reactions out of him.

"You should give me a handicap then, " Lovett countered. 

"Like what?"

"Close your eyes, Mr. Super Spy," he said. 

It wasn't actually a bad idea— work on observing with his other senses would make it more of a challenge and be good practice. 

"Fine," he said, but when he did, Lovett asked, "how do I know you're not cheating?"

"I don't cheat," Tommy said flatly but he started untying his tie. 

"Whoa, whoa, what are you doing?" Lovett asked, but Tommy wordlessly tied it over his eyes then said, "Go ahead, test it."

He assumed Lovett did because he didn't complain any further. He felt strangely vulnerable, unable to see Lovett, knowing Lovett could still see him. It was silly to feel that way he knew. He’d been in much more vulnerable situations over the years— he'd been handcuffed and left to figure his own way out of them and he’d had to work his way through a maze with his sight and hearing blocked. Tommy had even been in a sensory deprivation tank before. He shouldn’t have felt this unbalanced by a blindfold just because it meant he couldn't tell how his roommate was looking at him.

Tommy took a deep breath and then held out his hands again, palms down approximately over where he thought Lovett's would be. He had to fight his instinct to struggle when Lovett grabbed his wrists to move his hands down a little and realized this might be harder than he thought. 

The first three times he let Lovett get the slaps in, paying attention to the sound of Lovett breathing and the feeling as his hands moved the air and the fourth time he darted out like a snake, hitting harder than he'd meant to without his sight to judge. 

Lovett let out a gasp, but when he went to untie the blindfold Lovett said, "Nope, keep it on," so he let go then held out his hands, palms up this time. 

Something wasn't right, but he wasn't sure what, so he waited until he heard Lovett fidget and then he raised his hands straight up, not playing by the rules, but he wasn’t the only one because there was nothing to block him. He tore off the blindfold and said, “You cheated!”

Lovett smirked at him. “How do you know? Maybe I just moved my hands out of the way.”

Tommy balled up his tie and threw at Lovett. “Fine. If you really want, we can go over your last test instead.”

Lovett groaned, but he pulled out a paper so covered in red ink that Tommy knew they were going to be reviewing it over more than one tutoring period.

—

End of term snuck up quickly on Tommy. There were study groups and final papers and exams, and on top of it, he was keeping an eye on Lovett’s work too, doing his best to make sure they’d both pass. He almost felt better about Lovett’s odds of doing well than his own at this point, which was a worrying thought.

Lovett didn’t agree, of course.

“I’m just going to give up now,” he said pushing his chair back, the legs screeching across the floor. “I really can’t see myself in a tux and I don’t even know if I like martinis.”

Tommy looked up from his review of ciphers, and asked, “What are you talking about?”

“I’m not cut out for this spy business.”

Tommy was tempted to agree, but he didn’t think Lovett would appreciate it. Instead he slammed his book shut, and said, “I think it’s time for a study break.”

“Okay, who are you and what did you do with my roommate?” Lovett asked, side eying him. “Is that some sort of high tech spy mask or are you a clone or something? No way would the Tommy Vietor I know suggest a study break.”

“I’m not that bad,” Tommy grumbled as he rummaged through his desk drawer.

“You definitely are,” Lovett said. “On the other hand, getting to the bottom of whatever’s going on might just be the motivation I need to succeed at espionage.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tommy said, flourishing the cards he’d found at Lovett. “You could do that, or we could convince Favs you’ve never played poker before, and take him for everything he’s worth.”

“That’s devious,” Lovett said with a grin, closing his book and staring at Tommy.

“Is that a no?” Tommy asked.

Lovett got to his feet and grabbed his wallet from his desk then said, “Well, I’d rather we played strip poker and fleece him of his clothes,” wagging his eyebrows at Tommy as he headed for the door. “But I won’t say no to taking his cash instead.”

Lovett poked his head back in the room when Tommy didn’t follow, asking, “Are you coming or not?” 

Tommy put thoughts of strip poker with Lovett aside and followed.

**Winter Break**

Lovett, Favs, and Tommy traveled homewards together on the train for winter break, only splitting up when they hit the city. Lovett split off to catch the LIRR while Tommy and Jon headed for Amtrak. Things got quiet after that. It took Tommy a while to notice the change because the train station itself was hectic, but once he and Jon made it to their train the silence was inescapable. It was hard not to contrast it with the trip up to that point, which had been spent trading jokes about their professors and the other students. Lovett had had Jon in paroxysms of laughter most of the trip though Tommy had managed a few sly asides that had landed well too. 

"Going to hang out with Emily over break?" he asked to break up the silence and keep from thinking about how he was going to miss Lovett. Lovett would probably have a lot to say about the WASP in his natural environment. Maybe he would have made enough jokes that Tommy wouldn’t have to think about what else he was missing. Lovett wasn’t going to be there though, and Jon was probably going to spend all break on his will-they-won’t-they journey, leaving Tommy by himself. The best he could hope for was that they’d let him play third wheel.

"Nah," Jon said. "They're skiing."

"You could ski,” Tommy said. Jon probably could. Growing up in New England nearly everyone he'd known had been at least once. Even as he said it, he winced a little, sure that Jon skiing would end up with him breaking both legs and either having to put off the rest of the year or ending up an object lesson in how to work through adversity. Tommy was sidetracked for a moment thinking of how useful casts could be to hide something you weren't supposed to have on you. 

"They're going to Vale," Jon said. 

"Oh." Tommy could help Jon figure out how to get out there, he supposed. 

"Might see her off tonight," Jon said with a pleased look. "But after that, rest of break, I'm free."

"Oh," Tommy said again, this time happily. "We could hang out then?”

He and Jon hadn’t hung out together, just the two of them, much at all. Senior year was always hectic, at least that’s what everyone said, and now that he was halfway through, Tommy had to agree. The exams were harder, there were special projects, and adding a newbie roomie on top of all that had left Tommy with barely any free time at all. It made sense: they were going to be one step closer to actually being in the field when they graduated and they needed to show they could withstand the stress. Still, what little free time he’d had never seemed to overlap with the little free time Jon had, and he missed his friend.

Jon smiled. "Yeah, you can tell me just how terrible it's been living with Lovett," and he sounded like he was making some sort of a reference, like he was in on a secret Tommy didn't know. 

"Ugh, the worst," Tommy said, but he didn't mean it, not really, and from the way Jon laughed, he knew it.

**The Third Quarter**

Even as Tommy grew used to Lovett as a roommate—maybe even as a friend— he couldn’t stop trying to figure out why he was at the school in the first place. They almost never had someone transfer that late, and if they did, they were held back until they picked up the skills they needed to graduate— after all, it was a school for spies, it wasn’t like they couldn’t fix the paperwork to make it seem unremarkable— or they had independent skills or training that made it easier for them to catch up. Lovett just didn’t fit the mold. 

It felt even more obvious after the break, to come back and find out that Lovett had avoided failing Stealth by the skin of his teeth despite all their work. Tommy had taken one look at his results and realized maybe supplementary exercises and extra reviews weren't the best way to approach things. He was going to have to have to go back to the beginning. 

He found his old notebooks under his bed and dropped them on Lovett's desk, enjoying his surprised reaction.

“What the fuck?”

“Thought these might be helpful for review,” Tommy said and he shouldn’t have at all been surprised when Lovett narrowed his eyes at him and deliberately pushed the notebooks back towards him.

“I’m good, thanks,” he said.

“You’re really not,” Tommy replied. Lovett rolled his eyes, “We _just_ got back. Do we have to do this now? Can’t it wait?”

Tommy wanted to say no, it couldn’t wait, but he saw Lovett’s annoyance. Instead, he sat on Lovett’s desk and said, “How was your break then? Did your parents end up letting you do that thing in the city?” That set Lovett off on a rant on how ridiculous it was that he could be trusted to go off to boarding school by himself, but not to go into the city, which somehow segued into Lovett humming bits of musicals at him and calling him uncultured when he didn’t recognize them.

“I’m going to have to educate you, Tommy,” he said and, despite having absolutely no interest in learning anything about musicals, Tommy found himself smiling fondly down at Lovett from his perch.

“Sure you are,” he said.

“What if you need to go undercover as a Broadway star, Tommy? And maybe the fact that you don’t know who _Gilbert and Sullivan_ are will be your undoing? What then?”

“I said, okay! Enough already,” Tommy said, laughing at the idea of Lovett teaching him how to be a better spy, even if he couldn’t help but think he wouldn’t mind any lessons that much as long as Lovett was the teacher.

—

Still, his increasing fondness for Lovett didn’t stop him from worrying. If anything, it made the worry worse: someday something was going to go wrong and Lovett was going to end up hurt. So Tommy did what anyone would do. He broke into the records room and made a copy of Lovett’s file. He knew he shouldn't have— he should have just looked at it there, learned what he could and left it. Having a copy was riskier. It increased the chance of getting caught and if he had to make one, he should have at least destroyed it once he’d read it over, but he couldn’t bring himself to. It didn’t really help though, other than confirming his suspicion that Lovett's last school had been a normal one because the most promising looking part of Lovett’s file was from the time right before he'd started and it was completely redacted.

When that failed, Tommy had tried hinting at the question to some of the teachers under the guise of checking in on what areas they thought Lovett might need assistance in, and while he got plenty of ideas for what to do with the tutoring period, he wasn’t exactly surprised when none of the teachers let anything slip.

He could have asked Lovett directly, he supposed, but for someone as talkative as he was, Lovett was more private than he seemed on the surface. Besides, getting people to talk to him wasn’t Tommy’s strength. That was when Tommy came up with the plan: convince Jon to find the answer. 

“I don’t understand why he’s here,” Tommy said to Jon at lunch, setting the stage for what he intended to ask Jon to do. He’d meant to lay everything out calmly, but as he thought about how poorly prepared Lovett was for anything after school, he lost the ability to control his frustration and went off. “He’s no good at concealing anything, he’s loud, he’s—”

“Right fucking behind you,” interrupted Lovett. Oh shit, Tommy thought as he felt the blood drain from his face; there was absolutely no way this was going to end well.

“And, for your information, I’m here because I cracked your codes and they _made_ me, not that it’s any of your business,” Lovett said, the quietest Tommy had ever heard him, which made it even worse, pivoting and leaving the cafeteria, tray still in hand.

Cryptanalysts were _important_. Knowing that made it obvious why Lovett was there. It fit that with all the things Tommy had been cataloging about Lovett to try to make sense of him, that this, of all things, would be the one thing Lovett hadn’t been loud about, until Tommy pushed him to the breaking point, at least. Worse, he should have seen it. He thought back to all of Lovett’s scraps of paper, scribbles in notebooks, nothing that made any sense to Tommy. He really should have seen it. What good was all the tradecraft, all the puzzles he could turn around in his head until he figured them out, if he couldn’t see what was right in front of him?

“Fuck,” Tommy said quietly.

“You know he’s not that bad,” Jon said accusingly, as if Tommy wasn’t feeling low enough already. He hadn’t meant to go off on all the ways Lovett didn’t fit in. He’d just meant to say enough to convince Jon that he should work on Lovett and try to find out why he was there, but once he’d started it was hard to stop. “You shouldn’t have gone off on him like that,” he finished as Tommy slumped, still stuck on the fact that Lovett had broken the school’s codes.

The thing was, not only did Tommy know about the school’s codes— there were several standards taught to the students— as far as he was aware most had never been broken. They always had the students try before they were taught the methods, but in every case someone had managed it, they tended to admit that it hadn’t been as independently done as the school had hoped. Even remembering the codes he’d been taught felt far from trivial.

This was the one piece of information that made everything else make sense, something he’d been training to recognize for years, only he’d stupidly blundered into the answer instead of getting the answer through any of the methods he’d learned over the years.

He couldn’t have fucked this up more; sure Lovett was lousy at tradecraft, but he wasn’t really that clumsy— if Tommy was being honest with himself, Favs was far clumsier. If he was a cryptanalyst, he’d need at least some basic knowledge to protect himself or he’d get himself killed, and right now, Tommy was sure that if he did, it would be Tommy’s fault because he hadn’t done a good enough job.

—

Lovett refused to hear a single one of his apologies. He’d even tried writing one and leaving it on Lovett’s bed. He’d thought maybe that would work, but the next day when he was trying to figure out how to ask if Lovett had read it, Lovett caught him looking, held up the note and deliberately ripped it in half, letting the pieces fall to the ground which answered that question.

Tommy wished he didn’t keep fucking things up with Lovett so badly when it was the opposite of what he wanted. It was like the beginning of the year all over again, only worse because now he knew what he was missing. It was hard to face how badly he wanted things back the way they’d been, but if he couldn’t face it, he couldn’t figure out how to fix it.

He tried telling himself that what he’d said hadn’t been that bad: on the surface, it really hadn’t. But he couldn’t help but think of it from Lovett’s point of view, knowing the little things Lovett had let slip when he’d talked about his past and having seen his file. It had called him a loner which was the most offbase description of Lovett Tommy could imagine. He might have been alone, but it wouldn’t have been by choice, not if it was constant. Lovett thrived on other people.

No, it wasn’t what he’d said that had been so bad, it was how he’d said it. If he’d been brave enough to just ask Lovett to his face, they’d probably still be talking.

Tommy barely had any chance to try and apologize or explain why he’d said it because Lovett was avoiding him. He’d even gone to the teachers and asked for a new tutor, so now Jon was the one catching him up while Tommy was getting lectured at. He tried to focus on the fact that he would have never expected Lovett to be the kind to narc on him instead of letting himself get caught up in his failure; it might have worked better if he hadn’t felt so guilty. He kept thinking he could fix everything, if he could only explain himself to Lovett. Or at least, he thought that the half of the time he wasn’t inexplicably angry at Lovett, like it was his fault Tommy couldn’t manage to keep his emotions in check.

“Maybe we were asking too much of you, Mr. Vietor,” said Professor Biden.

Tommy took a deep breath and nodded, as if that was an acceptable statement. It had never been acceptable for him. There was always something he wasn’t quite good enough at, that he had to work a little harder to improve to make sure he kept his spot, his friends, his future. He was such a disappointment.

“Well, it will all work out in the end, no doubt. Try and give Lovett some space until this thing cools down.”

Tommy nodded again even though he knew Lovett well enough to know that was terrible advice: giving Lovett space would just give him time to cement his grudge.

“You can take the time to buckle down and focus on your studies. Your work’s been slipping a bit lately, son.”

Another deep breath and he managed to utter, “Yes, sir,” without choking on it. Somehow, he would find a way to get through this and it would make him better, or at least, it would make him better at hiding all the things he didn’t want anyone to realize weren’t right with him. It was just another obstacle to tackle, one way or another. When it was behind him he could move on and stop spending so much time thinking about Jon Lovett.

—

Tommy had gone to the classroom automatically, out of habit, instead of going to study hall, only realizing he shouldn't have been there when he heard Jon ask, "So where did you and Tommy leave off?” through the partially open door.

"Other than with me as a lost cause?" Lovett sounding like he was joking, but, removed from the moment, Tommy could hear the hurt underneath and he winced. It wasn't that he hadn't meant what he’d said; he had, but if he'd known Lovett was going to hear him, he could have handled everything better. 

"I know Tommy can be intense about all of this," Jon said and Tommy could think of so many more appropriate words than intense. He almost wished Jon had just called him an ass because he knew he deserved it. "But if he didn't care, he wouldn't have been so upset."

Tommy wished he could see the look on Lovett's face at that because it's true even if he wouldn't have put it quite that way, but he wasn’t in the room. All he had was the sound of a huff and Lovett saying, “Yeah, well. Can we talk about anything else? Even this stupid class?"

Tommy backed away from the door then. He'd pressed his luck more than enough considering how his luck had been lately.

—

Tommy was so focused on his assignment— a reading from a text on extractions along with a side of the CIA factbook to help pick five countries and generate a rescue plan for captured national from each— that he didn’t notice when Lovett stormed in the room.

Tommy had his headphones on— he wore them constantly now since it was better to not have to engage Lovett and risk another fight, even though there were days when he thought a fight might be better than Lovett freezing him out— so he didn’t hear it when Lovett said, “It’s a fucking jungle in here.” Tommy did notice when Lovett yanked off his already half undone tie and shirt, throwing them to the ground, but he only took a quick glance, not wanting to incite Lovett’s comments on taking a picture or not being a homophobe which would inevitably end with Tommy turning bright pink and Lovett laughing at him.

Tommy forced his eyes back to his papers, though he ended up having to scribble out enough of the assignment that he knew there was no way around having to copy it over, when the papers he was working on billowed up, creating a cloud around him.

“What the fuck?” he said, ripping off his headphones and looking up to find Lovett, defensive-looking by the now open window.

“It’s too hot in here!” Lovett exclaimed. “I’m going to melt and not in a good way.”

Tommy ignored that. “It’s winter. The heat comes on.” Facts were good. Stick to facts. He started to collect the papers that had flown around the room.

“Winter doesn’t mean we need the room to feel like Rio De Janeiro. If I wanted to die of heat, I’d go to school somewhere warm, like California.”

Tommy took one breath, and then another. “So you decided to create your own blizzard?” which might have been unfair, but Lovett had to realize there were consequences for his actions. What if someone was stupid enough to send him on an actual mission and he pulled something like that? He’d end up captured or dead and what was Tommy supposed to do then?

Lovett started to bluster, but Tommy deliberately put his headphones back on to block out whatever he had to say, gathered the rest of his papers carefully into a neat stack, and left without a backward glance, deliberately and carefully shutting the door to ensure it didn’t slam, each action an intentional comment on Lovett’s behavior.

Tommy holed up in an out of the way study room that was rarely used, long after his work was done, in hopes that Lovett would be asleep when he returned. He wasn’t. The music from his stupid video game and the sudden silence as Tommy opened the door gave him away, but he didn’t say anything, so neither did Tommy.

The window was nearly closed, open just a fraction, enough to even out the temperature from the radiators that really did pump out too much heat. Tommy rolled his eyes— in a school of spies, an open window was an invitation, even if a closed one wouldn’t keep any but the youngest and most inept students at bay— but didn’t say anything. It was just going to spark another fight if he did and that was the last thing Tommy wanted. Bad enough that this had been the first time Lovett had talked to him in a week. So instead he let it be, and let Lovett be too, not acknowledging that he was awake, or their fight, or anything at all in favor of changing quickly and getting into bed, beneath blankets that would have been far too heavy without the brisk air.

—

Jon had been scrupulously fair about dividing his time between Lovett and Tommy ever since the fight. He switched tables at meals, breakfast with Tommy mainly because Lovett almost never made it before the last five minutes or so, but other than that, he split things down the middle, lunch with one of them and dinner with the other. Tommy knew they'd become fast friends, but he still found himself strangely jealous, and not of Lovett for taking Jon away from him, which would have made sense. He was a little jealous of that, but mostly he was glad that their fight hadn't left Lovett isolated. No, he was far more jealous of Jon for getting to spend the time with Lovett.

He found himself bringing Emily up more and more as if to confirm Jon was still pining after her and not anyone else. He didn’t even care that every time Jon ended up gazing off into space with a dopey look on his face at the mention of Emily’s name. That was when Tommy realized he couldn't hide from it anymore. He didn't care about Lovett because he was his friend, or well, he did, but that wasn't the only reason he did. 

He was in the middle of very subtly trying to ask Jon what Lovett was up to when Lovett came over and, with a wave to Cody and Miller, turned his back to Tommy, then said to Jon, "Come on, you promised you'd help me out over lunch. Besides, Tommy gets you for breakfast, it's my turn."

Tommy rolled his eyes at that, as if he hadn't been counting just as closely, and whether Jon caught him, or it was just Lovett's whining, something made the most mild person he'd ever met shout, "Enough."

For anyone else, it probably wouldn't have registered as shouting, but from Jon it was enough that their whole table went silent along with half of the tables nearby. 

"Enough," he said again more quietly. "I can't do this anymore. You two need to get your shit together or you can have someone else split their time down the middle because I'm done," and with that he walked off. 

Cody and Miller made faces but when they saw Tommy glaring, they quickly went back to eating their lunches instead of commenting. 

"Who pissed in his cheerios?" Lovett asked, and when no one engaged him, he started to walk away. 

"Wait, Lovett," Tommy said. "Can we talk? Please." The please came out sadder than Tommy expected it to, but something worked because Lovett stopped and turned around. 

"What?"

"Maybe not here," Tommy said, looking around at a cafeteria full of kids who were doing an excellent job seeming not to pay them any attention, mostly because they'd spent years training how to seem like they weren't paying any attention. 

"Fine. Whatever," Lovett said but he headed towards the exit, leading Tommy to what he still thought of as “their” classroom. Fortunately, it was empty.

Lovett sat on one of the desks and swung his feet. "You wanted to talk," he said. “Talk.” Then he stared at Tommy until he felt uncomfortable, but he made himself hold Lovett's gaze. 

"Jon's right," Tommy said. "We can't keep doing this."

"So reasonable of you to decide," Lovett said, and if it hadn't been directed at him, Tommy was pretty sure he'd be admiring how withering he sounded. 

"Lovett," Tommy said. 

"Tommy,” Lovett replied, mimicking him. “Fine, whatever, we'll pretend to get along for Favs' sake. It's not like there's that much longer. Can I go now?”

“See you in class,” Tommy said, not wanting to push his luck, even though he wished Lovett would stay. Lovett acquiescing was a start, even if it wasn’t much of one, and Tommy could be good at taking a small opportunity and turning it into something more. He had before.

Things were better after that. Not as good as they'd been, but at least Lovett would say a grudging "Good morning," if he said it first and acknowledged him in the halls. It wasn't much, but it was a start.

—

Still, sometimes Tommy just felt like he needed to escape, from Lovett, from his friends, the academy, and his future, all of which left him feeling out of control. It was well into winter and probably too cold to spend very long on the roof at all, but he needed to clear his head and everywhere he turned he saw Lovett, or something that reminded him of Lovett, and it just made everything worse. The roof probably wouldn’t be much better than anywhere else— Lovett had joined him up there a few times— but at least the roof memories felt different. Somehow, Lovett seemed easier up there, less confusing. It might have been the closest Tommy had felt to being a regular kid since he’d started at the school, the time he spent on the roof with Lovett. More than anything, he wished he could recapture that feeling: the sense of possibility Lovett seemed to bring to everything.

He stopped in his tracks at the stop of the stairs when he saw the door was ajar— someone had used a brick to prop it open. He almost turned around when he saw that because all he really wanted in that moment was to be alone, but he made himself continue. Someone else sharing his spot and being that obvious could ruin everything. He’d just put a word in their ear about remembering their lock picks, maybe sticking a coin in the hinge, or even just putting tape over the lock plate, anything more subtle than a brick.

He moved quietly, wanting to see who it was before he said anything. Maybe part of him had known exactly who he was going to find because, of course, it was Lovett. He tried to think of a way to say what he needed to say without being too harsh, but before he could, he heard a loud sob, and then another. Tommy didn’t know what to do. He wanted to go to Lovett, to try to comfort him, but he didn’t think Lovett would want that. He wanted so badly to be someone who would bring Lovett solace and not more pain, but somehow he felt sure if he revealed himself he would make things worse. He wondered if he should get Favs instead, and send him up to comfort Lovett by proxy, but something inside him recoiled at the thought.

In the end, he crept back to the door, quietly as he could, which was very quietly indeed, particularly since he kept stopping and almost turning back each time he heard another noise from Lovett’s direction. In the end, he left Lovett alone, telling himself he was leaving Lovett in peace, not deserting him, not retreating, but he couldn’t quite make himself believe it. Leaving Lovett was cowardly, as cowardly as it was to hide his feelings behind worrying and anger, and he knew it. He sat at the top of the stairs, trying to convince himself it was for the best to continue avoiding Lovett instead of admitting the truth. Before Tommy could come to a conclusion, he heard footsteps and, giving into his instincts, he fled, hating himself a little for not being ready to stand his ground with Lovett. He had time, he told himself. He could still fix things, he just had to find the right moment.

**The Fourth Quarter**

Tommy had spent most of spring break alternating between trying to figure out how to fix things with Lovett, getting angry at the situation, and trying not to think of Lovett at all, the latter of which was increasingly difficult for him. It was like the more he tried not to think about Lovett, the more he did. He ran through the catalogue of annoying things Lovett did to try and convince himself he didn’t care, but somehow none of the evidence stacked up against the pleased little smile Lovett would get when one of his jokes was well received, or better still the laughter when Lovett couldn't help laughing at his own jokes. He needed to get Lovett to forgive him, but since he still wasn’t exactly sure why Lovett had forgiven him for their terrible meeting in the first place, he hadn’t been able to come up with a way to replicate the effects.

Still, it wasn’t until Tommy opened his door and saw all of Lovett’s things were gone that he realized how much he'd had to lose.

—

Tommy stood in the middle of their room, staring at the empty desk, the bare mattress, the abandoned hangers in Lovett’s closet. He closed his eyes then opened them again, as if maybe it was all a figment of his imagination, but half the room was still bare as if Lovett had never been there. He made himself take a deep breath and regroup. The first thing he needed to do was find out more information. Lovett’s stuff probably wouldn’t be gone if any of the worse case scenarios Tommy was rapidly running through had happened. Well, there was one, but Tommy didn’t let himself dwell on that possibility. Instead, he focused on figuring out what had happened.

He would have gone to the office but, he checked his watch, they were closing in a few minutes and even if he ran, he doubted he’d make it, which made step one to find Favs. Favs would help him figure things out.

Favs was exactly where Tommy expected to find him, in the computer lab, writing to Emily. That was when Tommy had his second unpleasant surprise of the day: Lovett hadn’t just changed rooms, like Tommy had assumed. Lovett had left the school entirely.

“What do you mean, you knew he was leaving?” Tommy asked Jon.

Jon shrugged. “He told me, said it wasn’t working out for him.”

“And you didn’t say anything?” 

“You’re roommates, why would—”

Tommy snorted. “You knew we were barely talking, Jon.”

“Yeah, well, maybe it wasn’t my place to tell you,” Jon said. “Maybe you two needed to have an actual conversation. Maybe Lovett would still be here then.” 

Jon actually sounded upset at that and Tommy shot back automatically, “It’s not my fault.” It wasn’t. It wasn’t like he was in charge of who stayed and went and did well and didn’t.

“Look,” Jon said. “He liked you and you—”

“I what?” Tommy asked because he wasn’t going to respond to the twist in Jon’s voice when he said “he liked you” or point out that while there had been a point Tommy thought they might have been approaching friendship, it was well before their fights.

“You were kind of a dick to him, all the time. It would have killed you to give him a break?”

“I’m sorry, you’re right. Everything is my fault,” Tommy said sarcastically and let himself fall backwards in his chair, which meant he didn’t see Jon roll his eyes.

“Did he say why it wasn’t working though?” Tommy pushed once more, glancing up at Jon.

Jon sighed, frustrated, and made a face. “Look, he just wasn’t happy. He wasn’t doing well—”

“He was doing fine, Hagel had it out for him,” Tommy interjected.

Jon huffed at the interjection. “And he wasn’t sure that this is what he wanted to do forever—” Tommy bit his tongue to keep from saying he might not have a choice, Jon knew how easy it was for civilians to get caught up when the wrong person thought they might be useful. “— And I don’t know, is that enough? Does it have to be a big, dramatic thing? You weren’t even talking to him, why do you care so much?”

Tommy wasn’t sure he’d ever heard Favs quite so frustrated with him.

“I don’t know,” he said, which was a lie, but he didn’t have time to think about why he was so bothered— with or without Favs, Tommy was going to find a way to get Lovett to come back to the school. Once Lovett was back, there would be plenty of time to figure out everything else. He just knew he had to get Lovett to hear him out.

“Look, I’ll talk to you later, okay?” Tommy said. “Tell Em I said hi.” He didn’t wait for Jon to respond before heading back to his room. It was time to come up with a plan.

The easiest thing would be to email Lovett— Favs had let it slip that they’d exchanged emails and if Tommy couldn’t get it out of him directly, all he’d have to do was figure out which variant of Emily’s name Jon was currently using as his password— but Tommy wasn’t entirely certain Lovett would actually read any email he sent, whether directly or through Jon, and besides, it was bad spycraft to burn a source like that without a promise it would pay off. 

He had Lovett’s phone number since he’d never managed to make himself shred Lovett’s file, but that had the same problem as email. There was no guarantee Lovett would talk to him. In fact, Tommy would bet Lovett would hang up on him, except he’d probably create his own hold music or answer the phone just to leave it off the hook without talking to Tommy at all. Tommy would keep feeding quarters into the payphone in the hall if he thought there was a chance Lovett would listen. The problem was, Tommy didn’t think he would, not unless he had no choice. That was when Tommy realized the only option was to talk to Lovett in person. At least Tommy already had his address thanks to the decision to keep Lovett’s file, which no longer seemed like such a bad one.

Once he’d committed to going to Lovett, he quickly realized he had to act swiftly. None of the teachers had been around to see him arrive; they were all busy since everyone was coming back. If he left stealthily enough, no one would know he was missing. 

He discarded his first three plans for leaving— the first, because he’d have to cross far too close to the headmaster’s house and, since the girls’ school started a week after theirs, his wife and kids were still here. He couldn’t risk heading that way, not with such a high potential for getting caught. The second plan was a three man job and while he was sure he could get Favs on board to help him eventually, he wasn’t sure who else he’d ask. He could probably have asked Cody, but he wasn’t sure if he was back yet, and there was no way he could trust Miller, not with something like this. Thinking about who he’d ask came with the terrible realization that, had they not fought and had he not left, Lovett would have been the one his mind jumped to, even if he could think of half a dozen more skilled classmates. He rejected the third plan altogether because while he knew where they kept the keys for the school van, he also remembered the tracker they’d installed after the last time he and Favs had stolen it.

Tommy was trying to figure out how long it would take to walk to the nearest bus stop when there was a knock on his door. He stilled, regretting that he’d turned on the light and might have lost his chance to escape notice when he heard Jon’s voice through the door.

“Come on, Tommy, let me in.” Tommy rushed to the door to let him in before anyone else noticed him in the hall, but in his rush, he hadn’t put away the map he’d been looking at.

Jon glanced at the map and said, “So you’re going after him.” It was a statement, not a question.

Tommy thought about lying for a split second but Jon knew him better than almost anyone else. Besides, he was pretty sure, in this particular case, no matter what he said or how well he prevaricated, Jon would see through him.

“I have to fix this,” he said.

“Okay,” Jon said. “Let’s figure out how to get you your guy.”

Tommy’s face went still at that. He hadn’t thought he’d been that obvious. It had taken him far longer than it should have to admit to himself what he’d wanted, and for Jon to say it like it was nothing felt undeserved.

“Come on, man, you don’t think I knew? You talked about him almost as much as I talk about Emily.”

There was only one response to that: “There is no way I talked about him half as much as you talk about Emily.”

In the end, it was lucky he had let Jon in; Jon remembered that the regular food delivery had been moved to that afternoon since everyone had been away on break. It would be easy enough for Tommy to sneak into the back of the truck and then sneak out again once the truck hit the next stop in town. From there, he could walk to the train station and duck any questions by using the ticket machine outside the station. That one piece of information and Tommy felt confident he could find his way to Lovett.

Jon was sure too, which wasn’t really surprising. He was one of the most optimistic people Tommy knew. Still, it gave Tommy a boost of confidence when Jon grinned and said, “You got this,” and held out his fist for a fist bump, as dorky as it was. “No way Lovett turns you down.”

Tommy hesitated for a second because he wasn’t nearly as sure as Jon seemed to be about how this was all going to turn out, but bumped fists with Jon and said, “Thanks, dude.” He still couldn’t believe Jon had managed to recognize what Tommy had barely been able to admit to himself and turn it into something so easy, almost a foregone conclusion. It was easy to forget sometimes, that Jon wasn’t as oblivious as he seemed. “Thanks,” he said again, softly, then quickly and deliberately began making his way to the truck to hide while Jon went off to distract everyone.

—

The one thing Tommy hadn’t calculated in his plan was that leaving on Sunday would get him to Lovett’s mid-afternoon on Monday, with no one home and nothing to do but sit on the front stoop and wait. Or at least, that was what Tommy decided on doing instead of surveilling Lovett’s house from somewhere more out of the way or finding the local high school and pretending to be a transfer student so he could find out more details about Lovett, things Tommy would never find out from him directly. Besides, Tommy was feeling frustrated and based on Lovett's file there were a few kids there he could work out some of his frustration on.

It was against his every instinct to wait for Lovett instead, out in the open, unprotected, but Tommy thought it was what Lovett would prefer the most out of any of the options and he owed him that much at least. Luckily, it was a surprisingly warm and dry spring day.

Tommy also didn’t count on how drowsy he felt in the warmth of the sun, or the relief of having succeeded with the first part of his plan, or the fact that he’d been on awake and on edge ever since he’d gotten back to his dorm and found Lovett gone. He let his eyes close for a second, just resting them. He wasn’t going to sleep. He would just lean back and listen for Lovett’s arrival; it was the perfect test to see how well he’d learned to rely on his other senses.

That was the last thought he had before he felt someone shaking his shoulder and his eyes flew open. The someone was Lovett, and he looked pissed.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he asked, standing over Tommy. His hands were on his hips and his face was in shadow because the sun was behind him. Tommy couldn’t read the expression on his face, not that he needed to. Lovett’s tone made his opinion very clear.

Tommy blinked, trying to clear away the sleep. He went to stand, but his right leg had fallen asleep. “Hello to you too,” he said as mildly as he could.

“Look, I quit. They didn’t have to send you to bring me back,” Lovett said. “Honestly, you’re pretty much the worst choice they could have made as far as that goes. Favs too busy to make it? Or did he refuse to come because he already knows what my answer is?”

Tommy wasn’t sure how Lovett had leapt to the conclusion that this was a school sponsored trip, but hearing that Lovett thought he was the worst choice made his throat close up and his stomach twist. He’d hoped— well, even if he couldn’t get everything he wanted, maybe he could still improve things, could get to a point where he was the second worst choice to send after Lovett instead of the very worst one.

"They didn't send me, I—" Tommy paused, then quickly, before Lovett could interrupt him, said, “I needed to talk to you."

"Wouldn't a phone call have been easier?” Lovett asked.

“Would you have answered?" Tommy asked, his lips twisting in a self-mocking smile. Lovett shook his head, “Probably not,” he admitted.

“So,” Tommy said, spreading his hands, palms open. He watched as Lovett’s eyes followed his hands instead of meeting his eyes.

“So,” Lovett echoed. “So what made you go AWOL? I hear they frown on that.”

“I—” Tommy had thought about this the entire way to Lovett’s house, at least in between figuring out how to get there and how to avoid being caught in any of the obstacles he could imagine. He’d thought about what to say when he got there and he still hadn’t managed to come up with the right thing to fix everything. The best plan he’d come up with was to say whatever he was thinking in the moment. Unfortunately, he ended up responding to what Lovett had said instead of apologizing or saying any of the other things he’d thought maybe he’d find the courage to say.

“As long as I’m back by Wednesday, I should be okay. I had my friend call the school and pretend to be my mom saying I was going to be back late for the quarter.” Tommy knew he was going off on a tangent, but he was having trouble finding the courage to tell Lovett what he wanted to say.

“Wouldn’t want you to tarnish that perfect record,” Lovett said snidely.

“I don’t care!” Tommy exploded, only containing the anger in his voice when he saw the unease in Lovett’s eyes. “I don’t. Look, there are more important things than school.”

“Never thought I’d hear that from the great Tommy Vietor.” If he hadn’t felt so stressed, Tommy might have found Lovett’s sarcasm endearing.

“Could you—” Tommy started and then stopped. “This isn’t easy, you know?” and when Lovett didn’t respond added, “You’re not making this easy.”

“Making things easy isn’t my strongest suit,” Lovett said. “So what, you’re here, not to convince me to come back, then why? Because you felt guilty? Don’t give yourself that much credit, you weren't even that much of a factor.”

“What if I wanted to be?” Tommy countered.

“If you wanted to be a factor in driving me away? Make up your mind, Vietor, you’re giving me whiplash.” Lovett looked exasperated.

“No, I mean, a factor in your decisions or I don’t know, a part of them maybe.” Tommy couldn’t bring himself to meet Jon’s eyes. He looked down at Lovett’s godawful sneakers instead and said quietly, “Favs was.”

Lovett snorted. “So you came all this way just because you wanted to be my friend?”

Tommy knew he should take what he could get. It was already more than he expected. Lovett probably didn’t mean they could actually be friends, but maybe he would say yes and maybe it would be enough. But there was part of him that couldn’t help pushing, which is why he said, “Sure, or…” even if it was directed at Lovett’s sneakers.

“What else is there, BFFs?” 

Tommy shook his head no, but Lovett barrelled on, answering his own question. “Don’t think we’re there. Frenemies? What else is there? Boyfriends?” Lovett clearly meant it as a joke, but Tommy stopped shaking his head and finally looked up at Lovett, feeling his face flush redder each second Lovett looked back at him, silent.

"You're not even gay," Lovett finally said. He sounded bewildered.

“Bi," Tommy offered tentatively. It wasn’t something he’d really talked about; it was probably the first time he’d said it out loud to anyone.

“Oh, _now_ you’re leaving.”

“I meant—”

“I know, it was a joke. I mean, not a very good one, but still. Anyway, it’s not like you ever said,” Lovett sounded defensive. “How was I supposed to know? You weren’t exactly walking around all rainbows and— why didn't you tell me? Why are you telling me now?”

“You didn't even like me, I didn't think it mattered,” Tommy explained without even thinking about it, then, almost reflexively, started to feel angry. How could Lovett blame Tommy for this when he didn’t even tell Tommy he was leaving? There were lots of things that Tommy would take the blame for, but that wasn’t one of them.

“I didn’t— _you_ hated me. You complained about me to Favs, I heard you!”

“It wasn’t— I didn’t—” Tommy stopped. What he’d meant or didn’t mean didn’t really matter. “I’m sorry. That was shitty of me, but it wasn’t because I hated you.”

“Then why?” Lovett asked in the smallest voice Tommy had ever heard out of him, which made him feel worse.

“I don’t know,” he said. “You’re confusing. To me, I mean. I was frustrated and worried and confused and I said some stupid shit.”

“Okay,” Lovett said, like that was it and everything really was okay. He dropped his backpack and sat on the stoop next to Tommy, as close as he could without actually touching him. It was closer than they’d ever been before except that time he’d helped Lovett down from the roof, or when he’d taught him to use the grappling hook, and Tommy wished he thought Lovett would be okay with him leaning in closer still, wrapping an arm around his back.

“Friends, then?” Tommy asked and told himself that could be enough.

“No take backs,” Lovett said then hesitated. “You said—”

He sounded a bit uncertain so Tommy decided to throw caution to the wind and grabbed his hand and held it. Lovett’s hand was warm and a little damp but Tommy wouldn’t let go of it for anything because it was everything he hadn’t been letting himself think about for so long. Well, not quite everything, but it felt real. 

“I did,” he said, quietly, his voice unwavering. Lovett was looking at him, eyes soft and lips slightly parted, as if he couldn’t believe this was happening— which made two of them— then he smiled, a tiny, sweet smile. Slowly, so Lovett would have every opportunity to pull away if he wanted, Tommy leaned in and kissed him. Tommy had never really dated anyone— he hadn’t had time to. He and Favs had messed around a little, but that had stopped once Favs met Emily, the way Tommy always knew it would one day. This kiss was hesitant and cautious, right up until it wasn’t, Lovett clutching at his arms like he was afraid if he didn’t hold on, Tommy would disappear. Tommy almost wanted to reassure him that he wasn’t going anywhere, except that would have required breaking the kiss, which was the last thing he wanted. 

Kissing Lovett felt like not enough and too much, all at once— his heart was racing too fast, his skin tingling everywhere, but especially at the points where Lovett was touching him. He almost felt like he might start floating, the energy thrumming beneath his skin enough to propel them both into the air, if it weren’t for Lovett’s grip on him keeping him grounded.

“I’m still not going back,” Lovett said, after they’d broken apart. They were both breathing a little heavy and Tommy felt a sense of awe. He’d done that, made Lovett’s face flush, his lips shiny and swollen. It was a good look on him. Tommy thought it might be his favorite Lovett look, but he’d have to test that out to make sure.

“That’s okay,” he said, as he leaned his shoulder against Lovett’s and wondered how soon would be too soon to kiss him again. “We can write.”

“Write!” Lovett sputtered. “What is this the 1800s? I hope you mean emails. Also why not just call? I know for a fact there’s a telephone, don’t forget I went to school there too. What's next, a telegram? Lovett STOP I STOP miss STOP you STOP and then I can send back don't STOP? Or maybe that's too modern. Pony express? Carrier pigeons with tiny scrolls?”

There was a pay phone, Lovett wasn’t wrong about that, but they were only supposed to use it on weekends. Worse, it was in the hall, so anyone who wanted to could hear at least half of your conversation. It was more likely that someone was hearing both sides, though, because most of the time one group of students or another had it tapped. Still, despite never having been tempted to use it before, and hating when his mom insisted on calling him at school, Tommy felt shockingly okay at the thought of calling Lovett; it would be a small sacrifice to pay to hear his voice.

“Calls on the weekends, and emails in between,” he offered when Lovett finally wound down enough for him to get a word in.

Lovett looked at him consideringly and then said, “Deal,” before pushing himself up and offering a hand to Tommy. “You’d better use those super spy skills and think of a good cover story for my mom though.”

“For your mom?” Tommy echoed.

“You weren’t going to head back to school tonight, were you? I heard you, you have until Wednesday. You might as well spend the night. I’d say you could bunk with me but she’ll probably make you stay in the guest room.”

Tommy felt a burst of warmth inside. This was happening. Somehow he’d managed to convince Lovett, and maybe he wasn’t coming back, but Tommy wasn’t losing him either.

“Well, are you coming?” Lovett asked impatiently, still holding out his hand.

“Yeah,” Tommy said as he grabbed it, secure in the feeling sure that for once, everything was going to be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> So this feels like a milestone for me because this is the first fic I started writing in this fandom back towards the end of May/early June, if not the first one I've posted, and is the longest thing I've ever written— I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it!
> 
> Comments are very much appreciated and I'm on [tumblr](https://tommyandthejons.tumblr.com) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/tommyandthejons) mostly talking about podcasts and plot bunnies.


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